Re: Japanese input in Linux environment (fcitx-mozc)

[Maria Shinoto <maria@shinoto.de>]

Emanuel,

Thanks for the input. I already wrote Jean-Christophe personally, 
because it seems that we have a lot in common that is not a real issue 
for most of the people.

But since you took so much effort into the matter, which I really 
appreciate, some comments from my experience:

I write Japanese, English and German without looking on the keyboard 
with quite some speed. Using compose keys is inacceptable in that way. 
Instead, I change keyboard layout any time I change the language. This 
is a matter of two or one keyboard strokes, depending on the physical 
keyboard layout. I mainly use Japanese keyboards with Japanese and US 
layout (physically) and type on -- software-wise -- Japanese (Roman 
letters changing on the fly to Japanese), English, German, Korean and 
Chinese keyboard layouts. Since I can type blind, I am not distracted by 
the different writings on the physical keyboard keys.

I would not leave this technique behind, since it evolved during my 
life, together with computers getting smarter, and it is the most 
comfortable and the fastest way. I need the speed when writing down text!

So I am now looking along the route of the LANG variable; seems to be 
the most promising way. But for today, I will not have time to check 
this -- at the moment I am writing on my Mac :)

Best,
Maria


Am 07.06.17 um 09:43 schrieb Emanuel Berg:
> Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
> 
>> I have exactly the same issue. I write
>> French, English and Japanese (albeit on a Mac
>> system) and the difficulty to shift from an
>> input system to the other is what keeps me on
>> the Mac.
> 
> French at least shouldn't be a problem on Linux
> or Emacs. They have a few goofy chars just like
> most languages. For example my Swedish have
> Å, Ä and Ö. I have that as a compose key.
> That way, I can have the programmer's
> Anglo-American keyboard layout constantly, even
> when I write in Swedish - i.e., the Swedish
> Ö key on the keyboard still being ; - and
> whenever I need the Ö I do
> 
>      Compose " o
>      
> Since getting that up, I've set up many other
> goofy chars, some of which I believe are
> present in the French language (I post this
> last in this post) - I've done this mostly to
> be able to write names correctly, e.g.
> Éric de Bisschop.
> 
> It is *much better* to have the compose key for
> the goofy chars than to switch the entire
> keyboard layout!
> 
>      Facts for fans: The only national
>      translation project of the man pages that
>      had a huge body translated was the French.
>      By now, French tech people are probably
>      fluent enough in English tho.
> 
> How it works for Russian and Japanese I have
> have no idea. The Russian alphabet is
> different from the latin but it is still an
> alphabet. So it should be straightforward.
> Tho the "compose method" doesn't work because
> the entire alphabet is just "goofy chars"!
> So then you have no choice but to switch
> between keyboard layouts.
> 
> You could put the Russian L at the same spot as
> the latin L but it would be an uphill battle
> and complete consistency impossible as there is
> no equivalent for every char/sound. But perhaps
> switching layouts between Russian and
> Anglo-American isn't that big a deal as the
> entire layout is switched, and because the
> change is total, there is actually
> not that much confusion?
> 
> With Japanese, is there an alphabet as well or
> is it pictorial only? Or parallel systems?
> How does a Japanese typewrite look?
> 
> Oh, the compose key in a Linux VT
> 
>      http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573/conf/remap.inc
> 
> ## Æ
> compose 'A'  'E' to U+00C6 # Æ
> compose 'a'  'e' to U+00E6 # æ
> 
> ## Å
> compose '0'  'A' to U+00C5 # Å - ring
> compose '0'  'a' to U+00E5 # å
> compose 'o'  'A' to U+00C5 # Å
> compose 'o'  'a' to U+00E5 # å
> 
> ## Ä
> compose '"'  'A' to U+00C4 # Ä - diaeresis
> compose '"'  'a' to U+00E4 # ä
> 
> ## Ö
> compose '"'  'O' to U+00D6 # Ö - diaeresis
> compose '"'  'o' to U+00F6 # ö
> 
> ## U
> compose '/'  'U' to U+00DA # Ú - acute
> compose '/'  'u' to U+00FA # ú
> compose '"'  'U' to U+00DC # Ü - diaeresis
> compose '"'  'u' to U+00FC # ü
> 
> ## more As
> compose '/'  'A' to U+00C1 # Á - acute
> compose '/'  'a' to U+00E1 # á
> compose '\\' 'A' to U+00C0 # À - grave
> compose '\\' 'a' to U+00E0 # à
> 
> ## C
> compose '/'  'C' to U+0106 # Ć - acute
> compose '/'  'c' to U+0107 # ć
> compose '.'  'C' to U+00C7 # Ç - cedilla
> compose '.'  'c' to U+00E7 # ç
> 
> ## E
> compose '/'  'e' to U+00E9 # é - acute
> compose '/'  'E' to U+00C9 # É
> compose '\\' 'E' to U+00C8 # È - grave
> compose '\\' 'e' to U+00E8 # è
> 
> ## I
> ## note: Linux VT + I/i + grave DNC
> compose '/'  'I' to U+00CD # Í - acute
> compose '/'  'i' to U+00ED # í
> 
> ## O
> compose '/'  'O' to U+00D3 # Ó - acute
> compose '/'  'o' to U+00F3 # ó
> compose '-'  'O' to U+00D8 # Ø - stroke (old name: slash)
> compose '-'  'o' to U+00F8 # ø
> 
> ## N
> compose '~'  'N' to U+00D1 # Ñ - tilde
> compose '~'  'n' to U+00F1 # ñ
>