[SCIM] Re: Custom Keyboard Layout Editor/Interpreter for SCIM

[Yukiko Bando]

Hello,

On Tuesday 04 January 2005 11:55, Kenichi Handa wrote:

> > - I had to refer to /usr/share/m17n/latn-pre.min to find out how to type
> > accented characters.  Are there any online documents which describe how
> > to use each M17N input method?  If there are, I think it would be nice to
> > mention such URLs in the SCIM Help.
>
> Please see this page:
>   http://www.m17n.org/m17n-lib/m17n-docs/m17nDBData.html#mim-list
> It lists all input methods with some description.

Thank you for the link.  It helps a lot with the images of keyboard 
layouts for some input methods.

> > - How about providing more variations of M17N-t-latn-pre each of which is
> > modified to (a) specific language(s)?  For example, ". /" is used to
> > generate letters with an above dot, but it is unnecessary in West
> > European languages such as French, Spanish, Portuguese etc.  With
> > M17N-t-latn-pre on, it seems that one has to press Space to type "./".
>
> That may be a good idea.  Actually M17N-t-latn-pre is based
> on Emacs' latin-prefix input method which is a merging of
> many other input methods of names LANG-prefix.  Converting
> all of Emacs' LANG-prefix input methods to *.mim is quite
> easy.  Perhaps in the next version, I'll be able to include
> all of them.

That sounds great!  I hope they will show up under a proper name of language 
or a group of languages in the SCIM menu, not in "Other".  I think average 
users might regard those in "Other" as something meant for a very specialized 
purpose as I did...                

> > -  How about a GUI configuration tool for M17N (just like the one for
> > scim-table) in the SCIM setup panel where one can disable unnecessary key
> > sequences (eg ./) and even customize such definitions?  Is it possible?
>
> It's possible only for such a simple input method as
> latn-pre.  In general it's not possible because, unlike
> scim-table, an M17N input method is a kind of state
> transition machine with possibly complicated commands, in
> other words, it's a kind of program.

I see.  Thank you for the explanation.  

BTW, I tried replacing apostrophe and grave with semicolon and colon (which 
are easier to type on Japanese keyboards) in latn-pre.mim and it worked!  It 
doesn't seem extremely difficult to edit existing mim files, but I still hope 
someone will make a GUI tool for such purpose and also to create simple M17N 
input methods from scratch some day in the future... :)    

Yukiko