Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-m17n (20 mails)

[Mike FABIAN <mfabian@xxxxxxx>]

Philip Amadeo Saeli <psaeli@xxxxxxxxxxxx> さんは書きました:

> What is the standard practice for inputting Chinese pinyin (not
> bopomofo!) phonetics into a document?  I'm writing a document where I'd
> like to include, for each sentence:
>
> 1. Chinese characters
> 2. pinyin transcription of the Chinese characters
> 3. English translation
>
> I am having little problem with the Chinese character input.  The
> problem is including the tone marks required by the pinyin
> transcription.  I've tried wierd latin vowels, but have not been able to
> find a complete set necessary.  I've been using "Insert -> Special
> Character" in OpenOffice.

Maybe you are using an unsuitable font? You can choose a
font in this "Insert -> Special Character" dialog in OpenOffice.

Which characters do you need for PinYin?

I guess "FreeSans" or "Luxi Sans" have all you need.

> Also, wheneven I set the XMODIFIERS to other than "@im=local", the
> compose key stops working,

That is unfortunately a design limitation in XIM (X Input Method).
You can only use one at a time. Either "@im=local" which means
compose or something else like "@im=SCIM".

Very few applications are able to switch between such input methods at
runtime. For example in mlterm you can switch between such X Input
Methods, i.e. you can switch between using compose and SCIM for
example.

But this doesn't help you for OpenOffice as OpenOffice doesn't support
such input server switching.

> so I am forced to use cut-n-paste to input any non-English chars.

You can make cut-n-paste somewhat more effective if you create a plain
text file with the characters you most frequently need, display
this file and cut and paste from there.

This is certainly more efficient than the special symbol input of
OpenOffice where you don't have all the characters you need close
together and apparently you cannot keep that dialog open either.

> How can I get the compose key to work together with a Chinese input
> method?

IIIMF is supposed to solve that problem in the long run.

Maybe it is possible to extend SCIM a little bit in order to input
pinyin. SCIM can switch between different input methods, it shouldn't
be too difficult to add another input method for PinYin transcription.
That is probably the best short solution for the moment.

-- 
Mike FABIAN   <mfabian@xxxxxxx>   http://www.suse.de/~mfabian
睡眠不足はいい仕事の敵だ。