[SCIM] Re: Design philosophy and strength of uim

[David Oftedal]

James Su wrote:
> Hi,
>  I think 'semantic API unification' is not so simple, because there are 
> too many differences between uim and scim, for example:
>  1. scim uses one api process_key_event to handle both key press and key 
> release events. uim uses two.
>  2. scim uses show/hide/update methods for preedit string, while uim 
> uses clear/pushback/update, these are very different.
>  3. the candidates api of scim and uim are also very different.
>  4. etc. etc.
> 
>  The code base of scim and uim are both very large, changing scim and 
> uim into a set of similar api may affact very large amount of code.
>  So I think wrapper (binding) is easier and better way, just like what 
> scim-uim does (only about 700 lines).
> 
>  But the most important, you had better to try scim-uim first.
> 
> Regards
> James Su

Another issue is how SCIM aims to be compatible with XIM and is run via 
a backend application, while UIM is just a library which aims to be 
implemented directly in the APIs that use it (like Qt and GTK). If SCIM 
and UIM were to merge, one would have to abandon one of those two goals, 
or combine them in some way.

In that way, I think both UIM and SCIM have an advantage over the 
other... UIM can be used without running a backend process, while SCIM 
gives a nice unified interface with an organized menu that's accessible 
from almost anywhere.

David