ibus and F11

[Jens Petersen]

----- "Peter Gordon" <peter at thecodergeek.com> wrote:
> Aside from the benefits of having the IMEs more modularized and whatnot,
> what would be the user-visible dis/advantages of iBus versus existing
> SCIM usage? 

I think the benefits will grow.  Initially users should see quicker startup times for F11 and be able to add or remove IMEs without restarting their desktop for example.

> For example, I use SCIM/Anthy to input Japanese text on a frequent basis
> (using the Rõmaji method); and one thing I love about it is that it is
> very easy to toggle between English and Japanese with its default
> keyboard shortcut (ctrl + space). Is switching back and forth as easy
> with iBus?

Yep, ibus supports Ctrl+Space for toggling by default just like scim.

> Another excellent feature of SCIM, for me, is the
> handwriting-recognition features provided through Tomoe. This helps
> me *immensely* in my study of Kanji characters since it allows me to search
> for the character in StarDict or on Wiktionary when I do not yet know
> its readings (and thus could not enter it with the phonetic Anthy/Rõmaji
> method) as I can simply draw it on my Wacom tablet and then have it
> inserted into the search window. Does iBus have similar capabilities
> or a Tomoe plugin of its own?

Not yet, I agree it would be nice to have ibus-tomoe.  Actually scim-tomoe is just a thin layer over tomoe-gtk and tomoe itself so it should not be terribly hard to do.