Re: Feature needed

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1307 bytes --]

Daniel Clemente writes:

 > > I really don't understand the purpose of this request. 

 > I see many:
 > - to discover other input methods which may also work for your
 >   characters; for instance you might have been using an input
 >   method for mathematical characters but then you discover that
 >   your preferred-language input method can also output them

Let me rephrase: I see no purposes that can be fulfilled beyond what
is already available that wouldn't cost an inordinate amount of
effort.  Eg, good luck if your preferred method is deeply embedded in
the OS (Mac, Windows) or X server.  I don't know about your
environment, but in Japanese, outside of very experienced users like
Handa-san, nobody wants to use Quail because the system methods are
way more efficient, especially for beginners.

 > - to compare input sequences needed for each character. For
 >   instance "古" is "gu32" in chinese-tonepy but it is just "jr" in
 >   chinese-cns-tsangchi, so I will be tempted to use the shorter
 >   version

Since you're not going to do C-x C-m C-\ ch TAB c TAB ts RET jr to
achieve efficient input, obviously what you're really interested in is
which methods are on average more concise.  For that, we should fix
the description strings for the methods if they don't already say so.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 1125 bytes --]


 > - to learn a particular input method by example, just by seeing how
 >   to touch type a character and typing it below~ without having to
 >   resort to searching that character in the Internet. I have needed
 >   such a feature many times.

What's wrong with M-x find-library RET chinese-cns-tsangchi RET M-x
occur <use mouse to copy character> RET, aside from being clumsy
(which you should expect from a proof of concept)?

With a little bit of effort (eg, limit the size of the popup window to
4-5 lines, sort shortest first so you get the single character, add an
option to pick the whole string in the region if the region is active,
add a mode which waits five seconds on each character in the example,
then prompts with the appropriate keystrokes, etc), that can easily be
turned into a generic tutor for any Quail input method.  But it won't
work at all for anything based on XIM or SCIM.

Another way to put my position is that by the time you've accumulated
enough diverse purposes for this feature, you have accumulated a bunch
of purposes that can be better served by much simpler special-purpose
programs.