[XeTeX] Input methods (was: Traditional TeX ligatures once again)

[François Charette]

Peter Dyballa wrote:
> Do you remember the Compose key of DEC VT-xyz terminals? Or the  
> mode_switch in X11? The idea behind it is to compose a kind of  
> complicated character from some basic characters on the keyboard. "y  
> would produce ÿ, ^2 would give ² (and _3 I think ₃), O/ gives Ø,  
> xx gives × and :- ÷? There are also codes for some Greek letters.
>
> Would it make sense to create an Input Manager to be able to type  
> these complicated non-keyboard characters without Character Palette?  
> I presume there are a lot more for non-Latin keyboards.
>   
With the editor vim, digraphs do just that (e.g. typing CTRL-K o/ gives 
you ø). The command ":digraphs" shows the whole list (quite extensive!). 
However I have added the characters with diacritics I use very 
frequently (as an Arabist) to my standard keyboard mapping in X11 (in 
the file ~/.Xmodmap). So for example typing RIGHT-ALT t -> ṭ and 
SHIFT+RIGHT-ALT a -> Ā. For less frequently used characters a Unicode 
character palette (I use gucharmap in Gnome) is perfect. Still I think 
something like Jonathan's input method could also be useful (on which 
platform(s) does it work?).

Also I use keymaps in vim to type Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic or Hebrew. The 
one for Arabic (which I  also use with xmodmap) is my own creation and 
is partially derived from the Buckwalter system, whereas the other ones 
are mostly phonetic or graphic mappings between my German keyboard and 
the characters in Greek, Cyrillic and Hebrew. In any case I found them 
easy to remember, even though I infrequently use them. I can type Arabic 
very quickly, and I never had to learn any of the standard Arabic 
keyboards ;-)

Regards,
François