Re: [tlug] Japanese input in aterm

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "Scott" == Scott  <scottro@example.com> writes:

    Scott> Recently, I began using aterm

What's aterm, I mean, is it part of a group of more or less related
apps, like the e- series?  Most important, is it dependent on GNUMB or
KiDding-mE?  If so, there are probably IM-related tweaks I don't know
about, and all of the below may be irrelevant.

    Scott> Next, I tried building it in Arch Linux.  After reading the
    Scott> README.config I chose --enable-kanji.  However, when called
    Scott> it with my langx script, I get a white box towards the
    Scott> bottom of the screen where I can input the kanji.  However,
    Scott> after inputting kanji nothing appeared in aterm.

You might want to publish the langx script (again, if you did it
before).

This sounds like it's probably an X Input Method (XIM) issue.  XIM is
an excessively complex and even so inadequate standard.  :-(  There are
several possible problems.

(1) You need to have an input manager (traditionally kinput2 for
Japanese) and often a backend processor (eg, Wnn or Canna) running _at
startup_ of the *term.  Recent apps may know how to get them started,
but it's not part of the XIM standard, and can't work seamlessly in a
distributed environment, so most apps don't try.

(2) You need to have the Unix environment set up correctly.  This
means the LANG, LC_ALL, or (usually) LC_CTYPE variables, which are set
to implementation-dependent locale strings.  It _may_ matter whether
you set it to "ja", "ja_JP", or "ja_JP.eucJP" (or other Japanese-
capable encoding), and I have seen installations where ja_JP worked
but neither ja nor ja_JP.eucJP worked (notwithstanding that kinput2
and Canna were configured to generate EUC-JP!)

You must also have the XMODIFIERS variable set correctly.

(3) You want to have the X environment set up.  One of the
unnecessarily complex aspects of XIM is the setup of the IM's UI.
You can do input on the root window, in a dedicated subwindow of the
app, or "over" the spot, all of which basically create a window for
XIM to use as a sandbox, or you can do "on" the spot input, in which
case the app must provide callbacks to XIM to help it draw the text.

It sounds to me like you need to set a resource in aterm to get it to
use over-the-spot preediting.  Here's the doc for the corresponding
resource in KTerm (no guarantee that Aterm will call it the same
thing, unfortunately---look in the /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Aterm
file on the distros that work; nb, capitalization of ATerm may vary).

   preeditType (class PreeditType)
       Specifies  the input styles using XIM protocol in the form of a
       comma separated list.  Currently, ‘‘OverTheSpot’’ and  ‘‘Root’’
       are supported.  The default is ‘‘OverTheSpot,Root.’’

Note that the KTerm styles available correspond to the ones you have
observed, but with Root getting priority where you have problems.
Dunno what that means, so don't ask me.  :-)

I don't think this has anything to do with getting aterm to accept
input, though.

ISTR having had a similar problem (input window appears in weird place
but doesn't give input to the app) with Mozilla, but I've long ago run
out of patience with Mozilla (it takes about 15 seconds to drag itself
back out of swap), so I don't recall exactly what happened or how it
got fixed (yes, I did fix it with configuration, not with "1 1 * * *
root apt-get install mozilla" in /etc/crontab).

    Scott> In general, I usually just set LC_CTYPE to Japanese.

AFAIK language names are an implementation-dependent extension; try
the POSIX-style "ja", "ja_JP", and "ja_JP.eucJP" as well.

"Of course, since you know it works in Debian, why not just switch?"
Cf. http://www.jwz.org/doc/linuxvideo.html, down at the bottom.

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
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