[Uim] Glossary

[YamaKen]

Hi Hiroyuki,

At Mon, 15 Aug 2005 03:28:44 +0900,
tkng at xem.jp wrote:
> 
> In the source of uim, we use some technical terms without explanation.

> In this mail, I want to define technical terms for uim. Some of them
> may need discussion.

Good job!

There are some refinement suggestion. Please take a look.

#I'm assuming that this document is mainly written for
#developers

> * preedit
> 
> Preedit is a string which is not yet input to an application.

Preedit is a string which is not yet input to an application. It
is appeared to inform user about input state of the input
context.

> In general, preedit is displayed with underline or reversed background
> color.

In most cases, preedit is displayed at the cursor position with
underline or reversed background color.

> Note that preedit could be plural characters.

Note that preedit may be consist of multiple characters.

> * commit
> 
> Once we could determine the characters which should be input actually,
> then libuim tells to an application that 'these characters were input'.

Once an input context get determined about the characters which
should be input actually, libuim tells to the application that
'these characters have been input'.

> This behavior is called 'commit'. Note that you *CANNOT* assume that
> string which should be committed is same as 'preedit' before the
> committing in the case of uim.

This action is called 'commit'. The string which will be
committed to often differs from the latest 'preedit' string.
Any assumption about an equivalence between the two strings
*MUST NOT* be applied.

> * segment
> 
> In uim, segment often means segment of a sentence. For example, in
> anthy, converting preedit is a sequence of one or more segments.

In uim, segment often means a segmented part of a sentence. For
example, in Anthy, converting-phase preedit is represented as a
sequence of one or more segments that each segment holds a
phrase. A segment provides a unit which per-segment operations
can be applied to.

> * context
> 
> Context is a unit of inputting. This is sometimes called as 'input
> context'.

* input context

Input context is a unit of inputting. The word is sometimes
abbreviated as 'context'.

> * input method
> 
>  (1) A software to input characters which cannot input from keyboard
>      directly.
>  (2) Part of uim which handles (key) events actually. 

(2) A modular unit of uim built on the standard interface that
    handles (key) events to transform them into some texts


And as a trivial opinion, the word 'multiple' is more
appropriate for all the 'prural' used in the document.

-------------------------------
YamaKen  yamaken at bp.iij4u.or.jp