Re: tlug: Kinput2

[Scott Stone <sstone@example.com>]

On Fri, 27 Mar 1998, Jonathan Byrne wrote:

> I think I wrote this once before but tried to send it from my work machine
> when it was having problems with the NIC and it went in the bit bucket.  At
> least I didn't notice it pop here.  My apologies if it did and was answered
> and I missed it.
> 
> Is Kinput2 a global FEP, or does it only work on things that are run from
> the same Kterm window in which Kinput2 was started?  That is, if you start
> Kinput2, will any Japanese-capable application that you are running receive
> Japanese input via Kinput2 whenever you hit the key combination for Japanese
> input?

it tries to be a global FEP :) - if you start X as 'user' and then run
kinput2&, any other kinput2-aware apps that you start as 'user' (or
presumably as other users, I'm not 100% sure on that - don't use kinput2
much), they'll use it.  kinput2 seems to run as a daemon process, which is
probably a good thing :)

> 
> Next, a "how does it work" question: on MacOS, Windows 95/NT, and presumably
> OS/2 (haven't tried OS/2 J), switching to Japanese input mode will attempt
> to put Japanese text into any application, whether it's double-byte enabled
> or not.  If the app with the focus isn't written to accept inline Japanese
> input, you get the little input box that pops up on your screen and you can
> type Japanese and choose kanji.  When you hit enter it goes into your
> document at cursor position, and sometimes you are lucky and it will work if
> you chose a Japanese font, under times it just won't and you get garbage.
> But the OS will always try and force it in there.
> 
> What is the difference between that approach and the Kinput2 + Canna or Wnn
> approach, where it won't even try to force Japanese into an app that isn't
> written for it, such as Netscape Mail?  Can a force-it-in everywhere
> approach be done on Linux/UNIX, or does the way things work under UNIX make
> this not possible?

right now, apps have to be kinput2-aware to use it.  ie, if I start
kinput2, I can put J text into a kterm, but NOT into a regular xterm.
Canna and Wnn6 are kana-kanji conversion engines - kinput2 requests the
conversion from whichever one is running (not sure which one gets
precedence if BOTH are running - probably Wnn6).

--------------------------------------------------
Scott M. Stone <sstone@example.com, sstone@example.com>
               <sstone@example.com>
Linux Developer/Systems Administrator for Pacific HiTech, Inc. 
http://www.pht.com		http://armadillo.pht.co.jp
http://www.pht.co.jp	        http://www.turbolinux.com


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