Kaixo! On Tue, Jul 23, 2002 at 12:50:24PM -0400, Maiorana, Jason wrote: > Can anyone recommend the best general purpose method > to input vietnamese under linux? > > Ive tried several different programs, but they tend not > to support utf-8 output, or are particular to a single > application.
With XFree86 you can use compostion trough dead keys. It works with utf-8 and with all programs. There is a "vn" keyboard map shipped that supports that. The idea is to use dead keys for all tone marks diacritics, and assign a> a( dd e> o> O+ u+ to keys on the keyboard. The bad point is that you have to type the tone mark *before* the base letter, which is not the preferred way to type vietnamese. in clear, you type: <v> <i> <dead_belowdot> <ecircumflex> <t> <space> <n> <a> <m> The differences with an US qwerty keyboard are: 1 -> abreve 2 -> acircumflex 3 -> ecircumflex 4 -> ocircumflex 5 -> dead_grave 6 -> dead_hook 7 -> dead_tilde 8 -> dead_acute 9 -> dead_belowdot 0 -> dstroke [ -> uhorn ] -> ohorn US and vietnamese keys layouts are switched with Shift-CapsLock So; it's a way to input vietnamese that works for all programs (and for viscii, tcvn or utf-8; but utf-8 should be preferred); it is not conforming to vietnamese habitude of typing tone marks after the letter, and so may need some time to get acostumed to it. To type using the vietnamese traditions require a special input method, it is not possible with just the standard keyboard framework. and to my knowledge there is no generic input method for vietnamese that works for all programs. There is an input method program called xvnkb, but it works only in fake iso-8859-1 mode; that is, it doesn't work with modern programs and doesn't work at all in utf-8 mode. Then, specific toolkits may provide some input methods as well; that is the case for gtk2 for example, it comes with an input method for viqr style (eg: <v> <i> <e> <^> <.> <space> <n> <a> <m>). adding a very basic telex style input method would be very easy by just doing a few minor changes to the viqr one. -- Ki �a vos v�ye b�n, Pablo Saratxaga http://chanae.stben.be/pablo/ PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466 [you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Italian or Portuguese]
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