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

[Emanuel Berg <moasen@zoho.com>]

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

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573