[Localization] Status on SCIM

[Sayamindu Dasgupta]

On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 7:34 PM, Nicolas Spalinger
<nicolas_spalinger at sil.org> wrote:
> Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 6:22 PM, Jim Gettys <jg at laptop.org> wrote:
>>> Sayamindu,
>>>
>>> I still see no compelling reason to convert the existing layouts to
>>> scim, at least in the short term.  It may certainly be best for future
>>> keyboards to do it "the new way".
>>>
>>> What am I missing?
>>>                           - Jim
>>>
>>
>> If we want to keep the existing XKB based system, we would have to
>> load SCIM conditionally, which I want to avoid (and maintaining and
>> supporting two different IMs might be a bit of pain). Also, even some
>> of the existing keyboard layouts would benefit from a switch to SCIM
>> (eg: Amharic and Nepali).
>> From what I understand (till now) - it is not a major effort to
>> convert existing XKB symbol files to .mim files, the process should be
>> relatively straightforward and easily scriptified. Of course, I don't
>> have a proof of concept yet :-)
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Sayamindu
>
> Hi,
>
> Maybe Martin Hosken's keyboard formats translation scripts can provide
> some inspiration:
> http://scripts.sil.org/svn-view/utilities/keyboards/trunk/scripts/
>

Thanks for the pointer - I'll definitely look into them.

> BTW, did you review the KMFL SCIM plugin I mentionned in an earlier
> thread? Pulling in existing open keyboards should save some work.
>

Yes - I did (and I remembered envying Keyman users on Windows quite a
few years back ;-). The reason I did not go for KMFL was that I did
not see any support for KMFL in ibus, which may cause problems if ibus
replaces SCIM at some point. Moreover, currently, Fedora does not seem
to package the KMFL plugin.

Thanks,
Sayamindu



-- 
Sayamindu Dasgupta
[http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]