Re: Canonical Mode Input Processing with multi-byte character sets

[Jungshik Shin <jshin@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 24 Feb 2004, Derek Martin wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 24, 2004 at 03:51:22PM +0900, Jungshik Shin wrote:
>
> >   Even worse yet, it depends on when, who and where. If a 'grapheme'
> > (e.g. a 'syllable' in Indic scripts, Korean script) is being formed when
> > 'backspace' is entered, it's desirable to erase just one combining
> > character. For 'committed' graphemes, one want to erase the whole
> > character sequence making up a graphme.
> >
>
> FWIW, I actually disagree with that.  Personally, I find that I only
> want to erase the last character of the syllable far more often than I

  Please, read what I wrote more carefully. I did write that deleting
the last letter is more useful when you're in the middle of typing a
sequence of letter to form a syllable. Once a syllble is committed into
the backing store, however, most Korean people want the cursor movement,
the selection and editing operations like deletion/insertion to be done
syllable by syllable.  However, incremental search needs to be done with
individual letters as unit instead of syllables. I think Indian people
have similar needs.

  These behaviors are default with XIM servers for Korean like 'Ami'
(http://kldp.net/projects/ami ) or 'Nabi' (http://kldp.net/projects/nabi).

> blunt, I find that really annoying, and if there's a way to change
> that behavior, I certainly would like to know how...

  What input method server do you use? The msg strings for Ami are available
in English, too.  That is, setting LC_MESSAGES to en_US.UTF-8 gives you
English menus in Ami.


> can't see how...  Perhaps my biggest problem is that I can't find any
> documentation about using Korean with Linux which isn't written in
> Korean.  Which is all well and good, if you already happen to speak
> Korean fluently...  ;-)

  I used to post 'Hangul and Internet in Korea FAQ' to
soc.culture.korean regularly, but that's a way too outdated by now.
Pls, feel free to ask me off-line if you have any problem.



> >   You're probably  right that issues above had better be dealt with
> > 'user-land' input methods/daemon/whatever if possible. But, then,
> > for characters that have been permitted (not in pre-editing stage),
> > 'user-land' input methods can't do much.  Terminal emulators? ...
>
> It seems like a perfectly viable solution.  But I can't help but think
> that it would be better if the kernel allowed for language-specific
> IME modules in the console/tty drivers.  Then you could deal with it
> uniformly at all levels of input management...  One API to enter
> characters, whether you're typing in a terminal emulator or at the
> console.  What I'm essentially envisioning is that all input

  It's not for kernel, but you may find it interesting to know more
about IIIMF and SCIM. http://www.openi18n.org/subgroups/im/IIIMF/

> about the right way to be able to enter hangeul, while still
> maintaining English menus and messages and such.  So far, my research
> has turned up precious little, and I have only been able to type in

  Well, it's easy. I always do that because I don't like the quality of
Korean translation in most software, commercial or open-source.  Add
this to your ~/.i18n (or equivalent. ~/.profile )

----------
LANG=en_US.UTF-8  (or en_GB.UTF-8, en_CA.UTF-8)
LC_CTYPE=ko_KR.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8 # not necessary unless LC_ALL is set, but
LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8     # just to be sure.
-----------

If you add them to your .profile, don't forget to export them.

-----------
unset LC_ALL      # just in case, LC_ALL is set somewhere else.
export LANG LC_CTYPE
-----------

 BTW, you don't need to read Korean to figure out the above yourself :-)
because the relevant information is available in any good POSIX document.
On Linux, try 'man setlocale' and related man pages.

  Jungshik

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