On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 09:06:13 +0000
Laurence Orchard <laurence@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote
> On Tue, 2004-11-09 at 06:38, Jens Petersen wrote:
> > Lew Bloch wrote:
> > > What is the IIim service?
> >
> > > I don't know if it's something that came with FC2 or that I installed
> > > and forgot.
> >
> > iiimf-server comes with FC2: you probably did an everything install?
> >
> > In FC3 the IIim script has been renamed to "iiim". IIIM stands for
> > Internet/Intranet Input Method.
> >
> > Jens
>
> Great!
>
> Now what does it do??
> and how if that is an appropriate question?
What it does, at any rate, is watch the keyboard and interpret sequences
of keys as input for languages in which the 54/76/106 key keyboard isn't
enough or is not appropriate. You can shift into whatever language input
method is active with control-space.
For instance, one way of typing Japanese characters is to type the
pronunciation as a series of Latin (Roman) characters. The input method
for Japanese collects the sequence and converts it to kana as you type.
For example,
k
ka->か
かn
かな
At some point, you hit the convert key (space bar on "standard" PC
keyboards), and the input method then converts the pronunciation to list
of possible ideographs, and you use the convert key or arrow keys to
select the desired ideograph. Continuing the example above, pressing the
space bar after the second "a" would give you something like the
following list:
かな->かな
カナ
仮名
金
And so forth. Chinese has a similar pronunciation based input method
which is not much used, and a method based on the shape of the ideograph.
Other languages with large numbers of characters or some other
non-linear typing issues use similar, but different techniques.
HTH
--
Joel <rees@xxxxxxxxxxx>
