Mule delta and FEPs

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

[David -- If you've subscribed to TLUG, let me know, so I won't send
 duplicates in the future.]

I've got Mule-19.33-delta mostly working (I can't be 100% sure because 
my /usr partition can't absorb yet another version of emacs, so I'm
working out of the source tree and not loading site-lisp/ etc).

The advantages are that this is the same Emacs that everybody else
will be using (or it will after a couple of versions when it gets
integrated into the regular Emacs source tree at the FSF), and that
there are some nice things in the 19.3x versions that 19.28 (the
version of Emacs that the most recent public release is based on)
doesn't have.  One that I like in particular is the ability to send
frames to other X displays.  This allows one to use Emacs like a
server over several machines, or to 'talk' to another user.  But
there's a lot more, including much improved menuing (they've
apparently borrowed the Lucid Emacs menuing facilities).  It's still
not XEmacs, but XEmacs isn't Mule, either.  Check out NEWS in an Emacs
19.34 installation somewhere.

The disadvantage (as you've probably guessed) is the FEP.  I have not
been able to get Wnn to work under the XIM protocol (see previous
post), and Canna apparently doesn't support XIM at all.  What you can
use is a somewhat improved version of the old SKK, now renamed to
Quail.  If you are seriously multi-lingual (just English, Japanese and
Chinese doesn't count---Wnn does that----add Arabic, Devangari, and
Vietnamese, etc), Quail allows input of all of them through a single
fairly consistent user interface.  Unfortunately, it doesn't do
bunsetsu very well.  If you can handle typing "koreha" RET "nihongo"
SPC C-f SPC RET "desu."  to get 「これは日本語です。」 you'll do fine.
It will take a bit of practiceto convert from the convenience of Wnn
or Canna though.

Some hints:
- The Mule version of Emacs 19.34 is available (as of yesterday) in
  ftp://etlport.etl.go.jp/pub/mule/.notready/mule-19.34-alpha.tar.gz
  I haven't tried it yet.  Why it's "notready", or when it will be
  ready, I don't know, YMMV.
  mule-19.33-delta has disappeared.
- To input Japanese, you must also get leim.tar.gz.  (manual.ps.gz is
  for Devengari TeX, SF is a list of sci-fi books, and I don't know
  what gd.tar.gz is.  elisp-jp.kit.gz might be useful, I don't know.)
- In Mule delta, you do not get Japanese by default.  I'm not sure
  what exactly is the reason, but Shift-Mouse-1 gets a Font menu, and
  if you then choose "Fontsets" and from there "..default" you get
  Japanese.  Choosing a font does not get the whole fontset as
  previously in Mule.
- To use other Japanese fonts, add something like

    (create-fontset-from-fontset-spec
     "-*-fixed-medium-r-normal--24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-twentyfour")

  to your .emacs.  This will add a font at 24 points to the menu, by
  the name of "..twentyfour".  I suspect that this may not give the
  best results, eg, removing the 'medium' term might allow bold faces.
  But at least you can edit Japanese.
- I suspect that Mule can do a pretty good job of auto-recognizing
  Chinese and/or Korean if you can use those, but I don't know.  This
  is of course configurable, but I couldn't find any documentation
  directly.
- For most functions, if you know what the function is in current
  Mule, you should be able to guess names for 'apropos'.  A lot of
  "commands" seem to have become "functions", so using M-X apropos is
  better than C-H a.

I'm going to continue working off-and-on on trying to get Wnn (and
possibly Canna) to function with the merged Emacs/Mule, but I don't
think it's going to happen soon.  Any advice or related information
would be greatly appreciated.

-- 
                            Stephen J. Turnbull
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences                    Yaseppochi-Gumi
University of Tsukuba                      http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/
Tel: +81 (298) 53-5091;  Fax: 55-3849              turnbull@example.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------
a word from the sponsor will appear below
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The TLUG mailing list is proudly sponsored by TWICS - Japan's First
Public-Access Internet System.  Now offering 20,000 yen/year flat
rate Internet access with no time charges.  Full line of corporate
Internet and intranet products are available.   info@example.com
Tel: 03-3351-5977   Fax: 03-3353-6096