Re: minibuffer, input methods

["B. T. Raven" <ecinmn@alcisp.com>]

"Martin Steffen" <msteffen@ifi.uio.no> wrote in message
news:mailman.403.1162151752.27805.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org...
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I got  the folling question/problem. It has to do
> with the following:
>
> I want to type in characters not supported by my keyboard (to be
concrete,
> German umlauts) but not only that:
>
>     I want that this is done also in the mini-buffer.
>
>
>
> As far as I have read through the ``theory'' of all it, I
> have come so far that
>
>   1) I have installed leim in addition to the
>     plain emacs distrition
>
>
>   2) I can activate some specific input-method, for
>     instance
>
>        M-x set-input-method ->> german-prefix
>
>   3) Since point 2) does not lead to the fact that
>      that method is _inherited_ into the mini-buffer
>      (and since  enable-recursive-minibuffers  is
>      kind of weird and unpractical), I can set
>
>      (setq minibuffer-allow-text-properties t)
>
>     so that for instance when I do a ``text search''
>     I can use this input method also when being
>     prompted for the search string.

Is the integer that represents a character really a property? I don't
think that diacriticals are properties even when using non pre-composed
glyphs. I have this variable left at nil and the minibuffer inherits the
input method wherever I think it should.


>
>
> --
>
> So far so good, now the problem starts :-) I have written
> some home-brew emacs-lisps functions, which prompt
> the user for some string, using for instance
>
>     (read-string "word: " word));
>
> Now, in the minibuffer, which is opened by read-string,
>
>
>      the input method is not inherited
>
>
> Now, how can I have that?
>
>
> I'm grateful for any hints, not only for in relation with the
> last question (what's wrong with read-string?) but maybe
> I'm in the complete wrong direction anyway?
>
>
>
> For instance, I remember in the good old days, there had been
> the possiblity to type in  umlauts with
>
>     C-x 8 " u
>
> or analogously.
>
> I can still type this, but it has not the wanted effect.  I see that the
> "key" C-x 8 is bound to "iso-transl-ctl-x-8-map" but it doesn't do what
I
> expect.
>
> Or maybe german-prefix is a wrong choice?
>
>
> Or maybe a trick could be, to set the input-method globally
> for all of emacs, maybe then it gets inherited by all
> minibuffers, also for read-string.
>
> Anyway, cheers, Martin

(read-string "string: " nil nil nil t)

works for me on 21.3 w32 build. I didn't use german-prefix
(latin-1-postfix instead) but it should work for any of them. Have a look
at the read-string function via C-h f. The fourth optional argument is
INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD.

Ed