Re: Switching to UTF-8

On Thu, 2 May 2002, Glenn Maynard wrote:

> On Thu, May 02, 2002 at 11:38:38AM +0900, Tomohiro KUBOTA wrote:
> >  * input methods
> >     Any way to input complex languages which cannot be supported
> >     by xkb mechanism (i.e., CJK) ?  XIM? IIIMP? (How about Gnome2?)
> >     Or, any software-specific input methods (like Emacs or Yudit)?
>
> How much extra work do X apps currently need to do to support input
> methods?
>
> In Windows, you do need to do a little--there's a small API to tell the
> input method the cursor position (for when it opens a character selection
...
> How does this compare with the situation in X?


  I know very little about Win32 APIs, but according to  what little
I learned from Mozilla source code, it doesn't seem to be so simple as
you wrote in Windows, either.  Actually, my impression is that Windows
IME APIs are almost parallel (concept-wise) to those of XIM APIs.  (btw,
MS WIndows XP introduced an enhanced IM related APIs called TSF?.) In
both cases, you have to determine what type of preediting support
(in XIM terms, over-the-spot, on-the-spot, off-the-spot and none?)
is shared by clients and IM server. Depending on the preediting type,
the amount of works to be done by clients varies.


  I'm afraid your impression that Windows IME clients have very little
to do to get keyboard input comes from your not having written programs
that can accept input from CJK IME(input method editors) as it appears
to be confirmed by what I'm quoting below.

  It just occurred to me that Mozilla.org has an excellent summary
of input method supports on three major platforms (Unix/X11, MacOS,
MS-Windows). See

  http://www.mozilla.org/projects/intl/input-method-spec.html.

> It's little enough to add it easily to programs, but the fact that it
> exists at all means that I can't enter CJK into most programs.  Since
> the regular 8-bit character message is in the system codepage, it's
> impossible to send CJK through.

  Even in English or any SBCS-based Windows 9x/ME, you
can write programs that can accept CJK characters from CJK (global)
IMEs. Mozilla, MS IE, MS Word, and MS OE are good examples.

   Jungshik Shin