Re: On CJK font selection (was Re: [Fwd: Re: Request for review and advice on wqy-bitmap-fonts fontconfig settings])

["Sergey Udaltsov" <sergey udaltsov gmail com>]

> Unfortunately it seems Sergey Udaltsov was discouraged by lack of
> positive feedback and stopped pushing something like
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Fonts/Dev/LanguageAwarenessProblem
To some extent this is true. But mostly the problem is related to the
lack of spare time (since all my FOSS activities are done when I have
some of it).

The problem is not just a matter of X properties, as Jim says. The
worst part of it is switching between .... well, currently XKB
switches groups. Which are not mapped uniquely to languages. Same
group can be mapped to several languages. For example, a person could
use group 'us' to input English and Romanian, use group 'ru' to input
Russian. From XKB POV it would switch between 2 groups. But in the
"language-aware" environment there should be 3 "linguistic states",
not 2.

So there are two options here:
1. Introduce the concept of the language context into X and XKB. So
apps would be able to distinguish 'group us used for English' and
'group us used for Romanian'. The group switching would take languages
into account.
2. As Jim advised, we could use window properties, do everything in
"user space" (from X POV). But this way we'd immediately have to
forget about XKB-configured switching (see "grp:*" xkb options) -
instead, stick to the way KDE3 does group switching (by explicit
shortcut grabbing). I tried to use that way in early gswitchit days,
and it is error-prone (though, I must admit, theoretically it gives
more flexibility - but practically it is very problematic).

The right way would be #1 IMHO. But the amount of effort for going
that way is significant - it would require introducing changes into
XKB wire protocol API, docs etc... I just cannot afford it right now.

Sergey