Status: New
Owner: ----
Labels: Type-Defect Priority-Medium
New issue 1472 by [email protected]: Making IBus usable in Hong
Kong
http://code.google.com/p/ibus/issues/detail?id=1472
We talked with Anish during GNOME.Asia, and he asked me to open a bug
report so this issue is tracked, so here goes.
-----
Both Candgie and Quick can be used to type Simplified and Traditional
Chinese, as well as Japanese.
However, given their design, there isn't any combination of keys that would
conflict between those languages. In other words, any given combination of
character can only lead to results in one of those languages, never more
than one.
Given all that, it would make sense to simply remove altogether the IBus
filter for the Candgie and Quick input methods in IBus.
Let's take an example.
In Candgie, the combination "rji" can only return results in Traditional
Chinese. That means if a user types this combination of keys, he/she is
expecting results in Traditional Chinese because that's the language he/she
wants to type.
But with the current IBus filter, if the filter is set to only let
Simplified Chinese characters pass, he/she would not get any results.
In the same way, the combination "yri" can only return results in
Simplified Chinese, and the combination "fji" can only return results in
Japanese.
This is by design of those two input methods: they were designed to avoid
conflicts.
As such, the filter just makes no sense for Candgie and Quick, and it
should be simply removed for those two input methods.
Now, in the above I claimed that Candgie and Quick were designed to have
absolutely zero conflicts, which was a little exaggeration. :)
In reality, conflicts happen. However, Candgie and Quick were really
designed with the goal of minimizing conflicts, and they do it so well that
the actual rate of conflicts is 8.04% [1]. This is such a small number, and
it happens in so rare occasions, that it can just be ignored.
It is also important to note that if ≳90% of Hong Kong people [2] use
Candgie and Quick, many people (but much less than in HK) use them in
Taiwan, and almost no one use them in Mainland China or in Japan. (as I
have been told)
Out of those three, Hong Kong and Taiwan write Traditional Chinese,
Mainland Chinese write Simplified Chinese, and Japanese obviously write
Japanese. So those two input methods really are used almost exclusively to
write Traditional Chinese, which makes the aforementioned 8.04% figure
completely negligible.
As such, it doesn't change the argument at all: the current IBus filter
should be removed for the Candgie and Quick input methods.
This is an absolute show-stopper for Hong Kong users at the moment (well,
not me, I can't write Chinese ;), and the simple act of removing this
filter for those two input methods would basically fix 90% of the problems
for 90% of the Hong Kong people.
GNOME 3.6 will feature a tight integration with IBus, and as such it would
be awesome if this issue could be fixed before it is out.
Of course, I'd be happy to provide a patch if you agree on the solution and
if you can provide some guidance. ;)
[1] I could only find the published numbers on this in Chinese:
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/倉頡輸入法
[2] Not just Linux users, actual **people**, as this is how everyone learns
to type at school in Hong Kong.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "ibus-devel" group.
iBus project web page: http://code.google.com/p/ibus/
iBus dev group: http://groups.google.com/group/ibus-devel?hl=en
