Intelligent Input Bus - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Intelligent Input Bus (IBus, pronounced as I-Bus) is an input method (IM)

Input method

An input method is an operating system component or program that allows any data, such as keyboard strokes or mouse movements, to be received as input. In this way users can enter characters and symbols not found on their input devices...

framework for multilingual input in Unix-like

Unix-like

A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....

operating systems. It's called "Bus" because it has a bus-like architecture.

Goals

The main goals of the IBus project include:

Provide full featured and user friendly input method user interface.
Employ authentication measures to improve security.
Provide a universal interface and library for input method developers.
Fit the need of users from different regions and customs.

Motivation

The draft Specification of IM engine Service Provider Interface document from the Northeast Asia OSS Forum Work Group 3 recommends bus-centric IM framework architectures with a bus implementation (similar to dbus). According to the specification, SCIM-1.4 is not considered suitable for further development as it is developed in C++, which usually causes ABI

Application binary interface

In computer software, an application binary interface describes the low-level interface between an application program and the operating system or another application.- Description :...

transition problems.

Since then, succeeding projects like IM-BUS (led by James Su) and SCIM-2 (led by Zheng Hu) were started. However, both projects are suspended. Therefore, Huang Peng from Red Hat

Red Hat

Red Hat, Inc. is an S&P 500 company in the free and open source software sector, and a major Linux distribution vendor. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with satellite offices worldwide....

established the IBus project to prove the idea of IM-BUS by using Python, D-Bus

D-Bus

In computing, D-Bus is a simple inter-process communication open-source system for software applications to communicate with one another. Heavily influenced by KDE2–3's DCOP system, D-Bus has replaced DCOP in the KDE 4 release. An implementation of D-Bus supports most POSIX operating...

and GLib

GLib

GLib is a cross-platform software utility library that began as part of the GTK+ project. However, before releasing version 2 of GTK+, the project's developers decided to separate non-GUI-specific code from the GTK+ platform, thus creating GLib as a separate product...

rather than implementing the functions recommended by CJK OSS forum. In spite of that, IBus has already gained community acceptance, and FreeBSD

FreeBSD

FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...

and many Linux distribution such as Fedora

Fedora (operating system)

Fedora is a RPM-based, general purpose collection of software, including an operating system based on the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat...

and Ubuntu

Ubuntu (operating system)

Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...

already have IBus in their package repositories. IBus became the new default input method framework in Fedora 11, and replaced SCIM in Ubuntu 9.10.

Architecture

IBus is developed in C

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

and Python

Python (programming language)

Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...

, thus avoiding the C++

C++

C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

ABI

Application binary interface

In computer software, an application binary interface describes the low-level interface between an application program and the operating system or another application.- Description :...

transition problem of SCIM.

IBus provides most of its functionality through services. There are three kinds of services:

Input method engine (IME): Actual input method.
Configuration: Handles the configuration for IBus and other services such as IME.
Panel: User interface such as language bar and candidate selection table.

IBus employs D-Bus

D-Bus

to communicate among ibus-daemon, services, and IM clients such as terminal emulators, editors and web browsers. ibus-daemon manages all clients and services and clients by receiving registrations from services, and sending D-Bus message to corresponding services and IM client.

It supports XIM protocol, GTK+

GTK+

GTK+ is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU LGPL, allowing both free and proprietary software to use it. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt.The name GTK+ originates from GTK;...

and Qt input method modules.

Features

Engine loading/unloading on demand.
Systray support.
Work with XKB
X keyboard extension
In human-computer interfaces, the X keyboard extension or XKB is a part of the X Window System that extends the ability to control the keyboard over what is offered by the X Window System core protocol...

.
Immediately apply configuration changes.
Provide C and Python binding.

Available Input Method Engines

ibus-anthy: A Japanese IME.
ibus-chewing: An intelligent Chinese Phonetic IME for Zhuyin
Bopomofo
Zhuyin fuhao , often abbreviated as zhuyin and colloquially called bopomofo, was introduced in the 1910s as the first official phonetic system for transcribing Chinese, especially Mandarin....

users. It is based on libChewing
Chewing (Input Method)
The Chewing input method is an intelligent Zhuyin input method. It is one of the most popular input methods among Traditional Chinese Unix users.Chewing was a project established by Lu-Chuan Kung and , sponsored by from Academia Sinica ....

.
ibus-hangul: A Korean IME.
ibus-m17n: A m17n IME which allows input of many languages using the input methods from m17n-db. See more details in #ibus-m17n.
ibus-pinyin: An intelligent Chinese Phonetic IME for Hanyu pinyin
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...

users. Designed by IBus main author and has many advanced features such as English spell checking.
ibus-table: An IME that accommodates table-based IMs. See more details in #ibus-table.
ibus-unikey: An IME for typing Vietnamese characters.

ibus-m17n

ibus-m17n is an IME that utilizes input methods and corresponding icons in the m17n database. Unlike ibus-table which supports plain tables, m17n input methods also support states, whose labels are displayed on the IBus panel (language bar). M17n input methods also support surrounding text, consequently, languages such as Thai

Thai language

Thai , also known as Central Thai and Siamese, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively...

and IMs such as plain Zhuyin

Bopomofo

Zhuyin fuhao , often abbreviated as zhuyin and colloquially called bopomofo, was introduced in the 1910s as the first official phonetic system for transcribing Chinese, especially Mandarin....

that require this feature are supported through ibus-m17n.

ibus-table

ibus-table, developed by Yu Wei Yu, is an IME that loads tables of input methods which do not need complicated logic to select words. Many structure-based Chinese input methods such as Cangjie and Wubi

Wubi method

The Wubizixing input method , often abbreviated to simply Wubi or Wubi Xing, is a Chinese character input method primarily for inputting simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese text on a computer...

are supported this way.

Officially released IM tables:

latex: Input special characters using latex syntax. Included in ibus-table package.
compose: input special letter by compose letter and diacritical mark. Included in ibus-table package.
Array30: Array30 Chinese IM tables.
Cangjie: Cangjie 3 and 5 Chinese IM tables.
Erbi: Er-bi Chinese IM table.
Wubi: Wubi Chinese IM table.
Yong: YongMa Chinese IM Table.
ZhengMa: ZhengMa
ZhengMa
The ZhengMa Input Method is a Chinese language input method...

Chinese IM Table.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.