[SCIM] Re: scim and meta-key

[Jon-o Addleman]

On Wed, Oct 06, 2004 at 09:36:14PM +0200, Mike FABIAN spake thusly:
> Jonathan Addleman <jonathan.addleman at mail.mcgill.ca> ?$B$5$s$O=q$-$^$7$?:
> 
> > I still find it odd that scim would interfere with the input that's
> > already working though, especially when it's inactive - I would think
> > that, until you hit ctrl-space, scim wouldn't affect anything at all.
> > But I don't pretend to understand the low-level workings of it.
> 
> All XIM servers prevent you from using compose and dead keys, not only
> SCIM. Actually even the newest version of SCIM doesn't let you use the
> compose and dead key mechanism of X11. But that doesn't matter as
> sufficiently new versions of SCIM have implemented a compose and deay
> key mechanism in SCIM which behaves the same as the compose and dead
> key mechanism in X11 does.

I guess that makes some sense. I'll definitely have to get the new
version then!

One question remains though, and I know it's kind of off-topic... But
why the $%#$%#$ is all the keyboard input handled through X? It makes no
sense to me whatsoever why a windowing system should be responsible for
hardware drivers and keyboard input methods. Very annoying...

Anyone know of a site somewhere that explains some of this? I gather
it's essentially historical reasons, but that doesn't explain why new
projects like gnome and kde keep implementing new things that should be
system-wide.

(forgive the rambling of an annoyed idealist)
-- 
Jon-o Addleman - http://redowl.dyndns.org