  | Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 23:11:49 +0800
  | From: Fergal Daly 
  | 
  | 7.3 seems to support Chinese input out of the box, it's got
  | miniChinput and some other stuff no documentation.  [ ... ]
  | google is a bit of a dead too.
  | 
  | Can anyone tell me what I should do? I've no idea, but a relevant/useful source of info could
 be the Â«linux-utf8Â» e-list:     http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html
     http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/ whilst the list is nominally about UTF-8/Unicode and Linux,
 it often delves into related areas (such as input methods). my (vague!) understanding of the state-of-play is there are
 multiple ways of keyboarding scripts such as "Chinese", and
 the choice of method is a mixture of personal preference,
 equipment (e.g. your keyboard), and the tool/application
 in question. w.r.t. X11 applications, it seems to boil down to two
 approaches:   one unique to the tool itself (apparently
 `yudit' is famous for this);  or  else using what's called
 an XIM (X Input Method).  WARNING: I am now guessing quite a bit here, based mostly on
           my interpretation of what I've read whilst lurking,
           and watching a few people keyboarding a Japanese
           script years ago!   *** your mileage will vary! *** XIMs generally work as a complex compose frontend.  i.e., you
 build up your character as a series of composes of the root or
 fundamental strokes ("radicals", I think they are called), and
 then "commit" the composite character to the application.
 ( yes, keyboarding these scripts _is_ quite slow, I believe
  a good typist can only do a few characters a minute!
  and I assume using a qwerty keyboard is very painful. ) some XIMs compose "in place", others do it on a special line,
 and some seem to do it in a special window (or the root?).
 also, some(/most?) XIMs apparently support a US-ASCII input
 mode as well --- _not_ a general Latin-alphabet input mode,
 which seems to require another TLA, called KBD, and which
 apparently doesn't work when an XIM is also being used? ---
 implying you have to switch back and forth between US-ASCII
 input mode (what us English-speakers would call "normal"
 keyboarding/typing), and the other input (e.g., Chinese).
 I'm not sure, but I have the impression the switch is often
 a toggle, and something like . many apologies if this is completely wrong or too misleading.cheers!
	-blf-p.s.  b.t.w., you almost certainly want to be using a UTF-8
      locale.  if RH 7.3 is the so-called "limbo" release,
      then you may quite possibility be using one by default.--
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