XLIB Programming Manual, Rel. 5, Third Edition

Chapter 11. Internationalized Text Input

Converting user keystrokes into text in the encoding of the locale is perhaps the most difficult task in internationalization. This chapter is a continuation of the last, and assumes knowledge of the basics of internationalization covered in that chapter. The first two sections provide an overview of the internationalized text input model used by R5, and are valuable to any programmer writing internationalized applications. The remaining sections describe the new Xlib functions and datatypes for internationalized text input, and are quite detailed. Programmers who will be writing output-only applications or who will be using toolkits or widgets with internationalized text input capabilities built in can skip these sections.

In an internationalized program, you can’t assume any particular mapping between keystrokes and input characters. An internationalized program must run in any locale on a single workstation, using a single keyboard. The mapping between keystrokes and Japanese characters is very different (and more complex) than the mapping between keystrokes and Latin characters, for example. When there are more characters in the codeset of a locale than there are keys on a keyboard, some sort of input method is required for mapping between multiple keystrokes and input characters. R5 supports the internationalization of keyboard input with the new abstractions X Input Method (XIM) and X Input Context (XIC) and the new functions, XmbLookupString() ...