RFC: scim and gnome 2.18

["Daniel Glassey" <dglassey gmail com>]

Hi,
I'd like to start discussion about proposing SCIM[1] to be included in
gnome 2.18 as the default IME so that languages/scripts that need more
than xkb layouts are supported by default.

Also, scim doesn't have the xkb restriction where you can only have a
maximum 4 keyboard layouts to swtich between.

This would require only small changes to gnome.

The keyboard preferences dialog would need to support enabling this:

Add a checkbox to the 'Keyboard' tab - something like 'Enable complex
input methods'. If scim is not installed then this will be disabled,
and something somewhere will tell you how to install scim to get this
functionality.

If this is checked then scim will be started at startup
Behind the scenes scim will be configured to start with X. In Debian
there is a script called im-switch that sets up the environment for
IMEs. Hopefully that could be made into a freedesktop project for
other distros to use as well. Or if there is another way to do it that
would be good as well.

There will be an extra button on keyboard preferences to call scim
config e.g. Complex &Input.

This requires X to be restarted so it would be useful to have a way to
log out and restart X rather than having to do a full reboot .

Regards,
Daniel

[1] http://www.scim-im.org/

P.S. I haven't found discussion about this before in list archives but
the thought was vaguely mentioned at GUADEC so now would be a good
time to discuss it.

--
I'm subscribed with delivery to gtk-i18n-list so only cc me if that
list is included in reply