Ulrich Ruess <utde@ms13.hinet.net> さんは書きました:
Would it not be easier and more convenient to create a special keyboard mapping which contains the necessary accented characters (e.g. by using Alt-Gr switching, or hot-keys)?
For a few characters only, yes. I use my own AltGr mappings for the German special characters äüöÄÜÖß because - I use US-keyboard layout - <AltGr><u> is only two keys but <Multi_key><"><u> is three keys - I can't use compose anyway because I usually use kinput2. But I think such individual mappings make only sense for a few very frequently used characters. It would be very nice to have all the other special characters easily available as well. The "Compose" mechanism isn't that bad. I was thinking about adding an input method to SCIM which gives access to the complete Compose table (which contains much more than just the few characters needed for pinyin).
Switching between different keyboard layouts while using XIM is painless, I do it all the time when I have to switch between English, German and Chinese.
Switching keyboard layouts is of course possible, but it drives me nuts to switch e.g. between US and German keyboard layout. Most special characters (e.g. parenthesis, ...) are on different keys and even alphabetical characters (like 'z' and 'y') change position. Switching between such different layouts isn't good for typing speed, sticking to one layout and using input methods for everything not accessible via that layout is faster in my opinion. -- Mike FABIAN <mfabian@suse.de> http://www.suse.de/~mfabian 睡眠不足はいい仕事の敵だ。