[kubuntu-devel] Making IBus usable in Kubuntu

[Scott Kitterman]

On Friday, August 03, 2012 12:13:10 AM Ma Xiaojun wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 9:43 PM, Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com> 
wrote:
> > Unlike the other Ubuntu flavors we do try to miminize our GTK
> > dependencies.
> > Since ibus is only needed for some languages, I think it would be more
> > appropriate for Kubuntu to only install it for people selecting languages
> > that need it, but I didn't do any looking into how to do that.
> 
> I personally hate such practice.
> I advocate the practice of providing all languages' support by default.
> This is the behavior of OS X that I really like.
> 
> I don't need to wait for installation of language packs before
> switching to new UI language.
> From my own experience, language-selector is not a robust tools, it
> occasionally leave half-baked UI (half English and half local
> language) requiring manual fix.
> 
> If IBus or other IMF is provided as language support only for some
> languages, then we're requiring the users using English locale to know
> about the fancy package names like fcitx*, ibus*, scim*...
> Manually enable such IMFs may also be a challenge.
> 
> Sample use cases: A Westerner may learn one of CJK languages with the
> help of one CJK input method. CJK native speakers may prefer English
> locale for various reasons.

In the past, we've been very constrained by CD size.  As I understand it, 
we're going to a larger format for Quantal, so we may be able to install more 
by default.  Also, on IRC today we were discussing the possibility of using 
fcitx instead of ibus in quantal.  That would reduce the dependency chain 
associated with including IM by default.

Scott K