Re: a few MULE criticisms

[Hin-Tak Leung <hintak_leung@yahoo.co.uk>]

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
<snipped>
>     >> An explicit list would help.  Emacs could offer them in order
>     >> of popularity, at least to the extent that they are available
>     >> in free versions.
<snipped>
> If you want, you can specify "where you're coming from" (in this case,
> quite literally) and we can start to differentiate the Chinese
> "sublocales".  And be greedy.  Ask for the list _you_ want.
<snipped>

My own chinese editing needs/experience is maybe somewhat atypical. My
typing habit is, in decreasing frequency:
(1) the equivalent of "tsang-b5.el",
(2) doing "ab?cd", "?bcd" etc under "tsang-b5.el"
     (some other thread of this conversation seems to indicate that this
      cannot be done under MULE at the moment)
(3) the equivalent of "quick-b5.el" (it is the same as "a*b" under
  "tsang-b5.el" in (1), and "a???b"+"a??b"+"a?b"+"ab" in (2))
(4) english (i.e. typing "apple" and getting the characters for that fruit.
              no equivalent in MULE?)
(5) try one of the pronouciation-based ones. The closest equivalent is probably
'CTLau-b5.el'?

I do use association quite heavily, i.e. take the later half
of a 2/3/4-character phrase after typing the 1st character,
and also often when I reach (3),(4), and the character I want
is known to be the later-half of a common phrase, I would type
the first half using (1), (2) and delete it afterwards.
Inputting 4-5 key strokes for the first character, select from a
small list of 2-3 by association, then a delete, is still sometimes
preferable to scrolling a much longer list of 20-30 in (3).

My Japanese typing habit is somewhat heavily customized - I
have two private input methods (one based on tsang's, the other
is pronouciation-based which I compiled myself from
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/culture/japan/info/jis1detl.lst, according
to my notes). Compiling one's own input method is probably because
it is learned as a 2nd language.