SCIM and other language characters -- documentation?

[HG]

I found this link :
http://www.mrbass.org/linux/ubuntu/scim/

Christian Fröbel a écrit :
> Hey Jonathan,
>
> as I'm new to kubuntu it's good to see that someone is caring about 
> documentation:)
>
> Now I finally got skim/scim running following the instructions documented on 
> the wiki-page Thilo Six pointed me at:
>
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/InputMethods/SCIM/CJK_Chinese_Japanese_Korean_Input_Method_configuration_using_SCIM_in_Ubuntu_6%2e06_Dapper_Drake
>
> But still I'm not able to input Latin characters using skim/scim.
>
> I'm not the right person to contribute to the documentation in this case as 
> I'm new to the topic. But maybe it helps if I tell you where I had problems.
>
> Firstly, there seems to be a general lack of documentation out there. I 
> searched the internet for decent docs but only got phony stuff. All I got was 
> something like:
>
> "Smart Common Input Method platform (SCIM) is an input method server and a 
> development platform to make Input Method developers' lives easier."
>
> This sentence seems to have been copied and pasted everywhere -- even into the 
> package descriptions.
>
> I need some kind of generel conceptual description. And along with this a 
> clear definition of the terms Input Method and Input Method Engine. Also 
> there seem to be conceptually different engines. Native scim engines and 
> bridges. The bridges seem to "bridge" to a library, like uim.
>
> What makes things worse is, that there seem to be almost parallel concepts out 
> there. There is scim and XIM and Xorg's native composing input method. Up to 
> know I still can't tell the difference between scim and XIM. What is XIM 
> anyway? Some kind of deprecated stuff?
>
> What is the difference between scim and skim?
>
> Once I got it running I was wondering what all the options in the skim 
> configuration dialog were good for.
>
> And, the worst of all. Where is the documentation of input method engines. I'm 
> still looking for docs of the UIM-latin engine. The UIM-latin engine seems to 
> be part of the scim-uim bridge. And the documentation only refers to the 
> documentation of the uim-library. That's nice, but doesn't help me.
>
> I posted a request for documentation on UIM-latin on the mailing list 
> uim at lists.freedesktop.org, but no response up to now.
>
> regards,
>   Christian
>
>