[LUAU] X Input Methods

MonMotha monmotha at indy.rr.com
Tue Oct 12 11:40:46 PDT 2004


Hawaii Linux Institute wrote:
> Hi MonMotha-
> 
> Unless you are willing to become an expert in emacs/mule, your best bet 
> at the present time is to go with Fedora.
> 
> Sorry this violates your "No distro specific" mandate.  But, again at 
> the present time, the implementation of "alternate input methods" in 
> Fedora (and in RHEL) is so superior to all other distros, I just don't 
> see any way not to discuss it.
> 
> Since FC2, Red Hat has decided to use iiimf as the (universal) default 
> input method for CJK.  It was a disaster when first came out and many 
> users immediately switched to the old method (e.g., kinput2 for 
> Japanese, xcin for traditional Chinese, Chinput for simplified Chinese, 
> nabi for Korean, etc.) after installation.
> 
> However, with FC3-Test 3, iiimf seems to be in an amazingly good shape.  
> Fecora Core 3 also provides an im-switching tool for users to move 
> between iiim and any of the old im protocols.
> 
> At the present time, iiimf is being developed mainly by corporate 
> developers (Red Hat, IBM, Sun, Novell, and a couple of smaller companies 
> in Hong Kong and Japan), and there is very little documentation.  I am 
> sure this will improve when iiimf gets into a better shape.
> 
> Red Hat has made iiimf a GTK2 module.  To invoke it, all you need to do 
> is to specify the locale and run the module (and use control-space key 
> combo to switch b/t your default language and the new language).  To 
> input Japanese characters, you will first type in Romanji (Roman 
> characters) using your English keyboard.  Your screen will show the 
> corresponding Katakana.  Then you can use the down cursor key to flip 
> into Hirigana, Kanji, and back to Katakana.  wayne
> 
> 

The issue isn't how a specific distro packages it.  Fedora may do a very 
nice job of that, and I'm sure it has a nice pretty frontend to set it up.

What I'm interested in knowing is what actually needs to be done to set 
this up.  I don't care if I have to recompile my X and GTK pacakges to 
make it work; I'm fully capable of doing so.

The question is not a request for a step by step toutorial.  What I want 
to know is what actually needs to be done.  I'm willing to read install 
instructions to make things happen.  I manage my config files by hand for 
a reason.  If I need to change something, there's no frontend to mess up 
by doing so.

Oh, and Debian appears to have iiimf available as a GTK module as well.

In a way, you did answer the question (albeit with a bunch of useless 
information as I *will not* run Redhat or anything derrived directly from 
it, I learned my lesson with RedHat 6.2 and 9).

--MonMotha



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