Re: [tlug] Inputting both kanji and Latin-1?

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

>>>>> "David" == David Santinoli <u235@example.com> writes:

    David> On Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 03:14:44PM +0200, Tapio Peltonen
    David> wrote:
    >> > is it possible to input both kana/kanji (e.g. via kinput2)
    >> > and non-ASCII Latin-1 characters (via the compose key) in the
    >> > same terminal window?
    >> 
    >> It is possible, you need a UTF-8 terminal.

    David> xterm is fine - I can properly display the UTF-8 font, and
    David> either input kanji if I start it with LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8
    David> or compose non-ASCII Latin-1 if I start it with another
    David> locale, but not both. :-(

Could you be a little more specific about why your application
requires a "terminal window"?

I don't know of any input method that allows this (and the X Input
Method is based on POSIX braindamaged global locales, so this
inability is basically designed-in).

What you can do (I don't know if it works for your application,
though) is run XEmacs (or GNU Emacs with the Canna patch[1], or maybe
Canna-ized vim or kon).  Then start in a non-Japanese locale, and use
compose processing for Latin-1, and Canna/Wnn/SJ3 for Japanese.

Alternatively, just use XEmacs or GNU Emacs, and switch input methods
at will.  XIM (kinput2) is not recommended if you can avoid it because
it interferes with normal Emacs keystroke processing.  I suggest
XEmacs for this application because it comes with Canna/Wnn support
built-in, with GNU Emacs you either have to patch Emacs or use kinput2
or xwnmo, or Quail, for Japanese support.  The Emacsen provide
(eccentric, if you're used to XTerm+readline) terminal emulation, but
not to the point where you could comfortably run vi.

Finally, with the XKBD extension (any reasonably modern XFree86), you
should have access to "ISO Shift Levels".  Then you could define ISO
Shift Level 2 or 3 to be the non-ASCII Latin characters.  You'd have
to memorize where they are on the keyboard, though---it's not a
compose- or deadkey-style input method, it's a direct reassignment of
the keystroke to the character.

No, I don't know how to do this last in practice; this is purely
theoretical.  :-(


Footnotes: 
[1]  Yes, it gets a little bigger, but nothing like the 3" other
patches advertise.  Sorry.

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