[PATCH RFC] Add language and text-direction to text protocol

[Jan Arne Petersen]

On 31.01.2013 23:39, Weng Xuetian wrote:
> On Thursday 31 January 2013 17:44:02，Jan Arne Petersen :
>> From: Jan Arne Petersen <jpetersen at openismus.com>
>>
>> The proposed API allows to send the language and text-direction for
>> inserted text from an input-method to an application.
>>
>> It also allows an application to specify a preferred language for
>> the input. This could be used by an application to set a language
>> by context or to request the last used language after an input
>> entry regains focus.
>>
> It's good to have such api, but why text-direction is useful?
>
> I mean, the text-direction is really hard to get the correct one if you are 
> typing in a multi line text box.
> 
> Say, one line English, and one line Arabic, or mix Arabic and English in the 
> same line, are both possible cases that could happen, which make this property 
> hardly be useful since the knowledge is so limited.
> 
> Or, it's just a preferred way, to indicate input method, like, RTL is the only 
> choice here?

No it is used by the input-method to indicate to the application what
kind of input it should expect. When you have an empty input field and
you switch a virtual keyboard from English to Arabian the cursor should
move from left side to right side.

> And, IMHO, those hint should be set in a key-value map, instead of everytime 
> we add some new API, hence the API would be much more flexible and easier to 
> be backward compatible. And maybe also reduce IPC round trip between input 
> method and application.

No a key-value map is not really helpful, we would need to add a key
specification so that not every toolkit and every input method uses
different keys, different types of values etc.

-- 
Jan Arne Petersen
Openismus GmbH
http://www.openismus.com