Re: Pango Multilingual Input Reading

[hiura openi18n org (Hideki Hiura)]

> From: Stefan Baums <baums u washington edu>
> Notably missing are the Indian scripts (that I assume the original poster
> was particularly interested in and for which he would have to
> download an input method separately somewhere •¡¹ check out the
> Indix Project); and the Chinese writing system (for which one
> would have to go through an external input method engine, 

Please give a try on IIIMF(http://www.openi18n.org/IIIMF/)

Languages/scripts covered includes, Bengali, Gujarati, Gurmukhi,
Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Simplified Chinese(with
multiple input methods), Traditional Chinese(with multiple input
methods), Korean, Japanese, Thai, Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, 
and many Europeans. 

> and I
> have not yet found a single one that works satisfactorily _and_
> does so in a UTF-8 locale).

When it comes to input method for native users, language engine 
quality(or intelligence) becomes a great matter for user's
satisfaction, while for foreign language users it may be good enough
to just cover the languages ;-)
So in that sense, there is always room to improve :-).

Anyway, IIIMF is designed to be a multilingual IM natively using
Unicode internally, with the architecture that mutliple engines
simultaneously plugged in, and also with multiple client side direct
bindings used simultaneously, such as emacs, gtk, java, XIM(for
compatibility). Currently working on SO/OOo direct binding. So you do
not have to use mono-lingual XIM framework. 

Also it comes with GUI based language switcher for GNOME, called
GIMLET, which allows users to switch/configure languages as if MacOS
or Windows do.

RPM pacakges for Redhat/Fedora can be found from Red Hat Rawhide or 
http://people.redhat.com/yshao/im-sdk/
Also RPM packages for Sun's JDS can be found on openi18n.org download
corner. 
Debian packages can be found in unstable.

Note: source repository is in subversion, so you need subversion
client to check out the source, or snapshot in tarballs.

--
hiura {freestandards org,OpenI18N.org,li18nux.org,unicode.org,sun.com} 
Chair, OpenI18N.org/The Free Standards Group          http://www.OpenI18N.org
Architect/Sr. Staff Engineer, Sun Microsystems, Inc, USA   eFAX: 509-693-8356