Re: [tlug] Best IME for an "i18n power user" on linux?

[David J Iannucci <jlinux@example.com>]

On Sat, Apr 25, 2015, I wrote:
> I'd like to try mozc, but... <sigh>.... don't feel like having to mess
> around after things get screwed up :=(

So, for no good reason, I tried installing mozc yesterday, with ibus,
and the install went smoothly and now I'm trying it out. Looks nice! I
like the instantaneous, on-line candidate display.

But there seems to be one big thing missing: the user dictionary. I've
googled around and find reference to supplementary dictionaries
available, but I can't find any way to create my own dictionary. I've
got about 20 entries in a kasumi dictionary that I use with Anthy and
find it, well... I guess indispensible.

My kids have unusual ateji for their Japanese names. I tried entering
them one character at a time, and lo and behold, when I then tried to
convert the whole name together, mozc had learned it! OK, I'm
impressed. (with only the minor? complaint that converting individually
can lead to having to hit the spacebar 200 times to find the obscure
kanji you're looking for, and if you accidentally miss it you have to
go through the whole damn list again!.... and maybe it's not there at
all, while with a dictionary tool you can always just copy/paste from
elsewhere. But... maaaa...)

But I also have other kinds of entries in kasumi that are not
"compositional" combinations of individual kanji. For example,
phonotactically illegal romaji sequences like "kgr", that can convert
to, say, a long Japanese name or phrase. I also use "aa" to generate ā
and "oo" to generate ō, etc. With kasumi you can do this easily, just by
explicitly specifying the input and output. I don't see how mozc can
learn these.

To be fair, I can see by googling that there are side tools that mozc
uses for various control purposes, one of which is mozc_tool, but the
Gentoo ebuild does not give me this tool, for some unknown reason (and
no, there's no USE flag for it). Maybe that tool is the answer to my
complaint :=)

Dave