[Uim] Korean input

[Park Jae-hyeon]

TOKUNAGA Hiroyuki <tkng at xem.jp> writes:

> Hmm, that's interesting. Now I have a question, if there's no Hangul
> keyboard, how do you type Hangul text? For example, in overseas travel,
> how do you write e-mail to your family?

David already answered, although I usually use my laptop.  :)
I suppose you should also install a Japanese input method on a Windows
machine if you want to write Japanese outside Japan.

> Can I ask another question? How do you think about romaja.scm of uim?
> i.e. is it usable for native Korean users? 

Now, I just tried it.  It is very interesting.

There is a popular Korean word processor named HWP that even dominates
over Microsoft Word in Korea, and HWP is regarded as a de facto
standard word processor in the sense that a governmental office only
accepts a document in HWP format.  HWP has a built-in romanized input
method.  Since there is not such a thing as a standardized romanized
Korean INPUT scheme, let me mention a couple of features that I find
are good in HWP, which I wish were included in romaja.scm.

1. SPACE does not complete a syllable, but it is just inserted.  For
   example, "b a b SPACE m eo g j a" translates to "밥 먹자."  A
   Korean person would find that this was more natural.  However,
   there are cases where the end of a syllable is ambiguous, and a key
   is needed to signal the end or beginning of a syllable.  HWP does
   not seem to have a key for this.  In my opinion, ' may be an
   option.  Similarly, RETURN is entered when it is pressed.  In
   general, if a key is not for a jamo, it is committed along with the
   syllable that was being composed.

2. A few different latin representations are accepted for a single
   jamo.  For example, "ㄹ" can be entered as "r" or "l", and "ㅙ" can
   be entered as "wae", "uae", or "oae".  I think an input method
   should be as generous as possible provided that it does not cause
   further ambiguities.

> I think it's useful for non-Korean Hangul users, but I can't guess we
> can say it's useful for Korean Hangul users.

Probably not many Koreans will use romaja.scm.  Nevertheless, it will
be useful for foreigners or Korean people living abroad who are not
familiar with Korean input.

Regards,

Jae-hyeon