Re: Japanese input (was RE: tlug: Japanese)

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

>>>>> "jb" == Jonathan Byrne <jpmag@example.com> writes:

    jb>Matthew J. Francis <asbel@example.com> wrote:

    >> method, but perhaps what I liked about it most is that the
    >> input works sensibly, as you describe.

I don't find the behavior of kinput2 or [X]Emacs/Canna nonsensical.
It took a while to get used to, but it was much more intuitive to me
than ATOK 4, I think it was.  (1990 vintage ATOK on Itchy-taro.)  And
now I can't make heads or tails of any of the proprietary FEPs.
(Kotoeri is more or less usable.)

Not to say you're wrong---but "sensible" is definitely in the fingers
of the typist.

    jb> Japanese input works this way in all proprietary OSes too, and
    jb> I confess that they spoil you.  The main reason that I spend
    jb> as much time under Windows as I do is simply because Japanese
    jb> input works so well, and even works in a lot of English
    jb> applications.

    jb> For example, my computer at home has the English version of
    jb> Outlook Express, but it has absolutely no trouble with reading
    jb> Japanese or accepting Japanese input, with the exception that
    jb> it doesn't take Japanese input correctly in subject lines.
    jb> The localized version has no problem with that.  Overall, it's
    jb> very nicely internationalized.

For the user.  From the point of view of (some of) the people who
receive your mail, and the people who are forced to write software to
hide your broken mail from those who don't see it, Outlook
Expectorates.  You've known I hold that opinion for a while now.

    >> I can't see a really obvious way of making KInput2 behave right
    >> either - so essentially I was looking at adding a direct
    >> interface to Canna without going through KInput2.

There never is an Obvious or One True Way in X.  That's because X has
historically been both bigger and smaller than any of its vendors.
It's too big for any of the vendors to hijack and impose their
proprietary systems on the standard (== X11), but too small to force
any of the vendors to abandon theirs.  So it's complicated; "I am
large, a contain multitudes" would have been written by an X
programmer if Whitman hadn't got there first.

    jb> Here's a "think big" suggestion/idea: one of the problems that
    jb> I see in the general world of Unix Japanese input is that
    jb> there are too many different ways of doing it: Kinput2, Canna,
    jb> Wnn, SKK, Egg, etc., [ ... ] Anyway, I think that Unix needs
    jb> what the other guys have got: just one way to do it.

God save us from Han Unification!  However, Stallman and Handa are
trying to arrange for exactly (the One True Input Method, not Han
Unification) that by ignoring all non-Quail input methods in Mule.  I
hope they fail.

    jb> so that if someone writes an application that uses the Linux
    jb> Japanese Input System (as an example name for it),

The obvious name is "Japanese Input on Linux Terminals," because JILT
is exactly what I would do to it, with quite high probablility.

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