Re: Quail input methods with combining characters

["B. T. Raven" <nihil@nihilo.net>]

emacs.mexon@spamgourmet.com wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'd like to write an input method for Chinese pinyin.  Existing pinyin
> input methods are for typing characters using pinyin, "hanyu" -> "汉语",
> not typing pinyin itself, "ha4nyu3" -> "hànyǔ".

Have you looked at chinese-py-punct-b5? I notice that the tone has to go
after the (nasal?) n: han4yu3.

> 
> My problem is that quail rules expect a single character (UCS codepoint)
> as the result.  But I want to insert a vowel with one or two diacritical
> marks, which is a sequence of combining characters.  Does anyone know
> how to do this, or if it's possible?

I tried to get an answer here as to how to stack arbitrary diacriticals
using composed sequences but I wasn't able to get an answer (at least
not one I could understand).
> 
> For example, I want to type a first-tone "a".  Pinyin signifies this
> with a bar over the character.  So when I type "a1", it should insert
> "a" followed by a combining macron.
> 
> (quail-defrule "a1" ?ā)
> 
> That gives an invalid read syntax, since the character after the
> question mark is really two characters.
> 
> (quail-defrule "a1" "ā")
> 
> That is accepted, but provides two options, either the unadorned "a" or
> the macron alone.
> 
> There's no way I can find precomposed characters for all cases.  For
> example, there's no precomposed character for "ǖ" ("u" + diaresis +
> macron).

See code points U+01d5 - 6

> 
> Does anyone know if there's a way to do this, or is quail limited to
> precomposed characters?
> 
> 
> 
>