[Uim] Scheme to determine default IM

[TOKUNAGA Hiroyuki]

Hi,

Today, I want to discuss about scheme to determine default input method.

It should be noted that "scheme" doesn't mean programming language in
this context ;-)

Currently, this scheme depends on each bridge such as uim-gtk-imm,
uim-fep, and so on.

* uim-gtk-imm
    determined by the environment variable, GTK_IM_MODULE.
    If there is no value, determined from entries of
   /etc/gtk-2.0/gtk.immodules. The input method written at the last line of
    this file (In addition, there is one condition, locale of the input method
    must match with current locale.) is used.

* uim-xim
    determined by the environment variable, XMODIFIERS.
    E.G. XMODIFIERS=@im=uim-anthy

* uim-fep
    determined by the environment variable, UIM_FEP. But if you set command
    line option when exec uim-fep, command line option is prior than env variable.


Retaining all of them is a bother! So, we should unify the input method
at the bridge level, and have a mechanism to determine that which input
method should be default. (Is there any objection?)

I made a list about features which we will need to resolve this problem.

 - Function to get a list of input method which can be used current context.
 - Function to get a locale of current context. (We don't store current
    locale to the context of input method, this item may need more
    discussion.)
 - Input method witching mechanism from other process. (Do we need helper extension?)
 - Useful input method switcher, of course GUI.
 - New environment variable to determine the default input method. (Mainly for
    debugging use?)

Any opinions are welcome!


-- 
TOKUNAGA Hiroyuki
http://kodou.net/