Re: re blackbox and icewm

[Mike Fabian <mfabian@example.com>]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com> writes:

> >>>>> "Scott" == Scott  <scottro@example.com> writes:
> 
>     Scott> In KDE which works, those are the results that I
>     Scott> got. However, in icewm, where I'm having the problem,
>     Scott> although LANG came out the same, echo $XMODIFIERS gave no
>     Scott> result--simply a blank space.
> 
> You absolutely need XMODIFIERS set for any XIM application to work
> at all.

"absolutely" is not absolutely true. 

If you delete the file "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/ja/Compose", you
will be able to use XIM without setting XMODIFIERS in many
circumstances. That is surprising and I don't yet know why this is so.
And I don't recommend it either, people should learn about XMODIFIERS
and set it correctly.

> This is a typical boneheaded X design decision, by the way.  XIM does
> not work without an X server, therefore the right place to put this
> information is in a property on the root window, which always will
> exist if a server exists.  The OS environment is the wrong place for
> this kind of information.  But I digress.

If it were like that, how could you use more than one input server at
the same time? With the current system, this is possible:

You can start X11 and then start several input servers:

   ~$ kinput2 -xim -kinput -canna &
   ~$ ami  &
   ~$ LANG=zh_TW xcin &
   ~$ LANG=zh_CN xcin &

Now you can do

   ~$ LANG=ja_JP XMODIFIERS=@example.com=kinput2 rxvt &

to get an rxvt and input Japanese,

   ~$ LANG=ko_KR XMODIFIERS=@example.com=Ami rxvt &

to get an rxvt and input Korean

   ~$ LANG=zh_TW XMODIFIERS=@example.com=xcin-zh_TW rxvt &

to get an rxvt and input traditional Chinese and

   ~$ LANG=zh_CN XMODIFIERS=@example.com=xcin-zh_CN rxvt &

to get an rxvt and input simplified Chinese.

How could you do that, if the information stored in XMODIFIERS were
a property of the root window?

If you delete the "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/{ja,ko,zh}*/Compose"
files, the first input server started (kinput2 in my above example)
will work even if XMODIFIERS is unset. For the other 3 you have to set
XMODIFIERS. Therefore (and because I don't clearly understand the
meaning of the Compose file) I recommend to always use XMODIFIERS and
leave the Compose file in place.

>     Scott> No, this didn't work--in the new kterm, when I hit space +
>     Scott> shift, the window would close with a message that there was
>     Scott> a segmentation error.
> 
> Wonderful.  300 patches in GCC 2.96, but kterm segfaults, and RH has
> closed down their Nihon research offices.

Really? Why? Do you have some details about that?

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