> Yung Sun has ported SCIM: > > http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/input-method/doc > uments/building_scim/ > > and UIM: > > http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/input-method/doc > uments/building_uim/
Sorry for revising a very old thread. But the IPS packages for SCIM are now available for download. For something that is SO SIGNIFICANT, I am honestly quite a bit surprised that there is no fanfare, no ticker tape, not even an official announcement. :-) It has been a pain (actually a great pain) for me to use IIIMF (and an unfair insult to many OpenSolaris developers who have nothing to do with input methods). It may seem very noble for Sun to continue to support IIIMF while everyone else has abandoned it. Even those previously gungho supporters such as RedHat and Novell have completely washed their hands long time ago (at least three to four years ago). IIRC the last IIIMF patch was submitted (by none other than Sun) in 2005! Go figure. To be fair, Sun's IIIMF developers have made it less unstable and less awkward to use this input tool. But that doesn't mean that it is not unstable or not awkward to use. Actually I can't think of any reason other than perhaps internal politics to continue to use this archaic and fundamentally inadequate technology. At least for practical considerations, I strongly suggest that we replace IIIMF with Yong Sun's SCIM packages in the next official release of OpenSolaris LiveCD. To the best of my knowledge, all major Linux distros have been using SCIM as the default IM (input method) for several releases now. Switching to SCIM will definitely make it easier for non-English speakers to switch from Linux to OpenSolaris. Even for English speakers, I think it can be very annoying to see the IIIMF icon appearing then disappeared in the right lower corner of the screen when we log into the GNOME session. Probably because it was compiled with Sun Studio, the OpenSolaris version of SCIM actually works more smoothly than in, say, SuSE 11.0. After I press the triggering keys, I can immediately begin typing Chinese. It comes so naturally, I don't feel that I am activating another program at all. This is truly amazing. BTW, as Jim (Grisanzio) mentioned in his blog: http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris/entry/meeting_globally#comments Sun's Beijing team is ready to release a Chinese character recognition application in the coming months for use in OpenSolaris. Because Chinese characters are glyphs, a CR-based input method is much much more significant than an English (or any other alphabet-based language) speaker can ever appreciate. We all anxiously look forward to it. I also expect that eventually this CR will be combined with some of the technologies developed in SunPinYin and StarDict, and it will be truly awesome. Think about it, after only two-thirds of an official iteration (i.e., four months out of a promised six month release cycle), OpenSolaris has turned from something that many if not all would thumb their nose at (as far as zh-localized version is concerned) to a legitimate contender as the most promising operating system for the Middle Kingdom. Whatever Sun Beijing's new boss is smoking, I most certainly would like try some. :-) -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ indiana-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/indiana-discuss
