CJKV Information Processing, 2nd Edition

Input Method Software

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can look forward to the joys of entire buildings full of people in cubicles yelling at their

computers! Aren’t sound-proof walls and doors nice?

Input Method Software

Input methods are the soware programs that perform the actual CJKV input. A less

common name for these is FEP, which stands for front-end processor. ey make use of

one or more conversion dictionaries, and oen use special rules to more eectively con-

vert input strings into ideographs, or into a mixture of kana and kanji (Japanese) or han-

gul and hanja (Korean). e actual mechanics of CJKV input were described in detail

earlier in this chapter.

Here you will learn a little bit about a select few input methods. Under most environ-

ments, these programs are separate modules from the text-editing or word-processing

applications with which they are used. is allows them to be used with a variety of ap-

plications. Some of these programs are dedicated for use within a specic application. For

example, Quail is the dedicated input method for Japanese-capable versions of Emacs,

such as GNU Emacs version 20 and greater.

Virtually all input methods have a facility that allows the user to add entries to the con-

version dictionary (either to the main conversion dictionary or to a separate user conver-

sion dictionary). is allows users to create entries for dicult-to-enter ideographs or

ideograph ...