From 6bf1bb384c3e52faa45340733f20c75dd6938f04 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Eli Zaretskii Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2022 11:10:42 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] Improve documentation of native input methods * doc/emacs/mule.texi (International, Input Methods) (Unibyte Mode): Document user-level features of native input methods. --- doc/emacs/mule.texi | 46 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------- 1 file changed, 38 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-) diff --git a/doc/emacs/mule.texi b/doc/emacs/mule.texi index 09fedb7f9f2..92e055300e1 100644 --- a/doc/emacs/mule.texi +++ b/doc/emacs/mule.texi @@ -50,13 +50,14 @@ others. @item You can insert non-@acronym{ASCII} characters or search for them. To do that, -you can specify an input method (@pxref{Select Input Method}) suitable +you can specify an Emacs input method (@pxref{Select Input Method}) suitable for your language, or use the default input method set up when you choose your language environment. If your keyboard can produce non-@acronym{ASCII} characters, you can select an appropriate keyboard coding system (@pxref{Terminal Coding}), and Emacs -will accept those characters. Latin-1 characters can also be input by -using the @kbd{C-x 8} prefix, see @ref{Unibyte Mode}. +will accept those characters. On graphical displays, modern systems +typically provide their native input methods, and Latin-1 characters +can also be input by using the @kbd{C-x 8} prefix, see @ref{Unibyte Mode}. With the X Window System, your locale should be set to an appropriate value to make sure Emacs interprets keyboard input correctly; see @@ -449,10 +450,13 @@ for that key. @cindex input methods An @dfn{input method} is a kind of character conversion designed -specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language -has its own input method; sometimes several languages that use the same -characters can share one input method. A few languages support several -input methods. +specifically for interactive input. This section describes input +methods that come with Emacs; for native input methods provided by the +underlying OS, @pxref{Unibyte Mode}. + + In Emacs, typically each language has its own input method; +sometimes several languages that use the same characters can share one +input method. A few languages support several input methods. The simplest kind of input method works by mapping @acronym{ASCII} letters into another alphabet; this allows you to use one other alphabet @@ -1798,12 +1802,38 @@ as @code{xterm}, you can arrange for Meta to be converted to @key{ESC} and still be able to type 8-bit characters present directly on the keyboard or using @key{Compose} or @key{AltGr} keys. @xref{User Input}. +@cindex input methods, native +@cindex XIM, X Input Methods +@cindex GTK input methods +Many modern systems provide @dfn{native input methods} for many +languages whose characters don't have keyboard keys assigned to them. +If Emacs was built with support for these native input methods, you +can activate such an input method and type the characters they +support. How to activate and use these input methods depends on the +system and the input method, and will not be described here; see your +system documentation. Here we describe some Emacs facilities to +control the use of the native input methods. + +@vindex x-gtk-use-native-input +In Emacs built with the GTK toolkit, the variable +@code{x-gtk-use-native-input} controls whether Emacs should receive +characters produced by GTK input methods. If the value is @code{nil}, +the default, Emacs uses the X input methods (@acronym{XIM}), otherwise +it uses the GTK input methods. The @code{useXIM} X resource controls +whether to use @acronym{XIM}, and @code{inputStyle} X resource +controls the display on X of preview text generated by the native +input methods; @pxref{Table of Resources}. + +On MS-Windows, Emacs supports native inputs methods provided by +@acronym{IMM}, the Input Method Manager; but that can be turned off if +needed; @pxref{Windows Keyboard}. + @cindex @code{iso-transl} library @cindex compose character @cindex dead character @item You can use the key @kbd{C-x 8} as a compose-character prefix for -entry of non-@acronym{ASCII} Latin-1 and a few other printing +entry of non-@acronym{ASCII} Latin-1 and other printing characters. @kbd{C-x 8} is good for insertion (in the minibuffer as well as other buffers), for searching, and in any other context where a key sequence is allowed. -- 2.39.2