Re: Japanese Input

[Mike Fabian <mfabian@example.com>]

Venkatesh Raghavan <raghavan@example.com> writes:

[...]

> My first attempt in installing JE from the scratch
> has been partially successfully but the FEP (kinput2)
> does not work as desired.

[...]

Recently I tried for the first time to use FreeWnn with kinput2 and
kterm or rxvt. Initially I stumbled over the same problems you
see. This seems to be just a keybinding problem. The default
keybindings appear very weird to me. At least they differ from all the
other input methods.

Previously I had only used wnn from XEmacs or Mule 2.3 and because
the keybindings of the XEmacs/Mule 2.3 <-> wnn interface are
similar to other input methods I didn't have any problems to use it.

> The details about my problem are as below;
> 
> a) I installed kterm and wnn4 version of kinput2. The jserver daemon
>    is running and start input system as follows
>    kinput2 -wnn -jserver localhost &
> b) When I try to type Japanese in the kterm window, the Kinput toggle
>    (Shift+space) switches me the Japanese mode and eventually stays
>    in Japanese mode. Kinput toggle (Shift-space) does not return me to
>    English mode.

Try Control-Shift_r-Space in kterm. This gets you back to English mode
in kterm (doesn't work in rxvt though).

>    Also, I cannot use the enter key in the Japanese mode.
>    For example, after entering Japanese and converting to Kanji
>    character, hiting the enter key does not have any effect.

The "return" key does work for me as usual. The "enter" key (i.e.  the
key on the lower right of most keyboards) does not work anymore, it
just inserts a ^M.

Example of Japanese input with kinput2 and wnn in kterm:

- Shift-space to go into Japanese mode
- enter "kanji", gets automatically converted to かんじ
- Control-j converts it to 漢字. If the first conversion
  is not successfull, type Control-j again and the selection
  window pops up.
- Control-l "fixes" the conversion
- Control-Shift_r-space leaves the Japanese mode

There are some other keybindings, they are explained in the
documentation which comes with kinput2:

    mfabian@example.com:~$ ls /usr/share/doc/packages/kinput2/doc
    ccdef    defaultkeys  problems  resources  sj3guide.ps
    classes  defkeys.wnn  protocol  sj3def     sj3guide.tex

Read the files "defaultkeys" (English) and "defkeys.wnn" (Japanese).

I wonder whether it would make any sense to change the default
keybindings of the kinput2 <-> wnn interface to something more similar
to other Japanese input methods. The default keybindings are really
strange in my opinion. But maybe long time wnn users want it like
that.

What do you think about that?

-- 
Mike Fabian   <mfabian@example.com>