----- "Peter Gordon" peter@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.