Re: [RFC] Text Input Management System (5)

[Chad Hardin]

On May 4, 2004, at 11:58 PM, Kazunobu Kuriyama wrote:

> Hi, Chad,
>
> Thank you for the information.  I appreciate it; in particular, the 
> images
> you kindly attached to your emails were very helpful for me.  (btw, 
> how did
> you create them?)

You're welcome, I used Grab.app

> As I still have some points I want to make sure, I'd be happy if you 
> could
> give me any answers to the questions below.
>
> Chad Hardin wrote:
>
> > On May 2, 2004, at 3:38 PM, Kazunobu Kuriyama wrote:
> >
> > > Chad Hardin wrote:
> > >
> > > > <snip>
> > > >
> > > > The only foreign language I'm familiar with is Chinese, and it is 
> > > > often used by combining a series of ASCII characters, typed into a 
> > > > mini-dialog box, and produces Unicode from that.
> Seems I was confused.  The mini-dialog box you mentioned here was the 
> one
> we have when using GNUstep, correct?

I don't know, I'm not sure what you asking since Ive never used any 
natural language but english with gnustep.

> On the other hand, in the Apple documentation, with the US English 
> input
> server, they say a "palette" comes up when the user types in Option-e 
> and
> e successively to generate an accented e.  How about the change of the
> text attributes in this particular case?  Is this similar to the case
> we have with the Chinese input server?
no, no pallete, it looks like this in TextEdit.app:

 typed option-e

typed e

Similar to chinese, whatever can be done inline with the text is.  
Palette only pop up when absolutely necessary then they quickly go 
away.



> > > <snip>
> > > (1) What key stroke is used to pop up the mini-dialog box for 
> > > beginning
> > >    conversion?
> >
> >
> > First, I actually end up using the Menu to choose languages most of 
> > the time:
> >
> >
> > "Apple"-Spacebar is used to toggle between two language selections.  
> > "Apple"-Option-spacebar is used to list through the language 
> > selections.
>
> What do you think are good substitutions for "Apple" and "Option" keys 
> when
> you need to use a non-Apple keyboard?

That's a good question, I was thinking that damn "Windows" key can be 
used better.  It would make a nice "Apple" key.

> > > (2) What key stroke is used to close the box for finishing 
> > > conversion? (3) Where does the box come up?
> >
> >
> > None that I am aware of, it seems to just appear and disappear on 
> > it's own, very naturally.   For the Chinese romanized input methods, 
> > no window will pop up for character selection until space bar is 
> > pressed (the roman characters show up in their normal position, but 
> > underlined).  At that point, the window showing the possible 
> > characters appear.  When you select a character, the window 
> > disappears and the roman characters are replaced by one or more 
> > chinese characters, then the cycle starts again.
>
> I'll make input methods work like that with GNUstep.  It seems to me 
> that
> the input methods for Chinese are a little bit simpler than those of 
> ours.
> So I expect it wouldn't be hard to implement a Chinese input server 
> once if
> we could implement a Japanese one successfully.  I'd be happy if we 
> could
> discuss on the issue in the near future.

I'd like to point out that the Chinese input method uses some type of 
dictionary.  Not the definitions of the words but a table indicating 
which characters can go together to make a word.  This dictionary helps 
out a lot since it reduces the number of selections to sort through and 
pick.  As you probably know, most Chinese words are two character 
combinations.

Sure, ask away!

Chad
> Thanks,
> - Kazunobu Kuriyama
>
>
>
>
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