Re: [tlug] CJK Input Methods

[Kalin KOZHUHAROV <me.kalin@example.com>]

On Sun, Jul 7, 2024 at 5:06 AM David J Iannucci
<jlinux@example.com> wrote:
> Tell me about it. I'm still struggling with it after all these years (I
> use Gentoo, and occasionally start from a fresh install that's somewhat
> different from what I was doing before - I haven't used one of the more
> "consumer-oriented" distros for many years)
>
I have also been using Gentoo for the last 20+ years and I tried a lot
of things with very mixed results...
scim+anthy sucks the least, so to say, this is what I use. And I often
type a lot of Japanese.

It is still on the ToDo list to document my setup, for my own sake at
least, but I am waiting to get it right again after a lot of
updates/changes...
Currently I have this very weird problem to get my keyboard almost
completely stuck for typing. I can change focus (e.g. Alt+Tab) and
luckily I can switch to another (non-X) vt, where I login and type
`killall -9 scim-panel-gtk` that solves the issue 100%. So at least I
have somewhat localised the issue.
I am yet to pinpoint what triggers it, since it happens not so often
(sometimes up to a few times a day). I suspect some key combination,
but not sure.
I also suspect this is to do with USE=gtk3 flag (a Gentoo-way to
selectively enable features on per package level) that after recent
investigation got apparently changed recently in my setup...

I often have to type German, Bulgarian, Russian on top of that (all on
jp106 keyboard) and it's a series of hacks that I hate, but am not
bothered enough to find time and fix "once and forever" :-)

So, Yasuaki, if you have some time and lots of passion to get this
problem fixed - go for it.
Whether you come up with a new solution from scratch, or fix some of
the legacy - it all matters.
But be warned that the i18n waters are a lot deeper than they seem
from the surface. And get yourself "the book"[1] and spend some time
with it.
Then try, and this is very difficult, to think about the myriad
distributions out there and how your software is packaged, deployed
and configured on more than few distributions (and what dependencies
it has).
And surely call for help, if you decide on that adventure ;-)

[1] https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/cjkv-information-processing/9780596156114/

Cheers,
Kalin.