Re: Behavior of input method -- crdt.el

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

On October 18, 2020 6:47:44 AM GMT+03:00, Qiantan Hong <qhong@mit.edu> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I’m now working on the compatibility between 
> https://code.librehq.com/qhong/crdt.el
> <https://code.librehq.com/qhong/crdt.el> and Emacs input methods.
> There might be the case that one peer is in the halfway of input
> some characters using input method (it seems that at this state,
> there are some temporary text inserted in the buffer without calling
> *-change-functions), and some changes from other peer arrives.
> 
> After resolving the position of the changes, crdt.el move point
> to the resolved position and use INSERT to insert the characters
> from remote peer.
> In the case that these other changes happen to at exactly the same
> position that current user is inserting using input method, seems that
> the input method get confused and consider those inserted character
> as part of its halfway input. It doesn’t affect character selection,
> but
> when user finally select a character, it erase both the halfway input
> and the inserted remote characters. Now the peers are inconsistent.
> 
> Anyone have any idea on how to workaround this?

One simple solution is to avoid executing remote changes as long as quail-translating is non-nil, thus treating the entire input method insertion sequence as a single atomic transaction.