mozc support in the default ISO

[Mitsuya Shibata]

Hi Gunnar,

> What's your opinion on mozc vs. kkc? Would it be fine to switch to ibus-kkc
> as default for Japanese in Ubuntu 18.04, or are there reasons to 'fight' for
> ibus-mozc? Please see the discussion at <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/787664>.

I prefer to continue using Mozc at least on 18.04/LTS.

Mozc has powerful settings tool. (yes, it's Qt UI)
Switch key bindings (not just customize), per-word user dictionary management
tool, hand writing pad, character search and selection tool...
These features are no or less for libkkc.

libkkc has higher accuracy than anthy. And it is simple "library", it can
easily develop with input method framework. Library interfaces is main
advantage of libkkc over Mozc.

See also: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/libkkc

This is just my personal opinion, it seems that Mozc and its tools have been
loved almost Japanese Ubuntu users. If we will decide to switch default input
method engine from mozc to others, the decision needs to have any good (big?)
reason.

GNOME decided with reason is "KKC is in a more active developing and it is
user-friendly, additionally fully based on GTK.". It is a good reason of
GNOME (as a GTK based software suite), but I think it is a weak reason
for Ubuntu.

---

Anyway, we should consider about input method client (not input method engine)
for future release too:

  - ibus-mozc: will be removed from upstream in the future [1]
  - fcitx-mozc: maintained by fcitx author, used on Ubuntu 15.10 - 17.04
  - ibus-kkc: well maintained by upstream, and default of Fedora
  - fcitx-kkc: developed by fcitx author, nearly experimental

Input method client selection problem depends on input method framework which
is used on Ubuntu in future release.

[1]: https://github.com/google/mozc/issues/287

Thanks,

2017-10-22 23:55 GMT+09:00 Gunnar Hjalmarsson <gunnarhj at ubuntu.com>:
> On 2017-10-22 14:58, Mitsuya Shibata wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I guess we need to patch gnome-desktop if Ubuntu decides to use
>>>> different default input methods for certain languages.
>>>
>>>
>>> What significance does the default input source have on GNOME? Are
>>> we affected atm? I'm asking because my understanding is that this
>>> is determined in Ubuntu by the installer and language-selector
>>> (pkg_depends).
>>
>>
>> This table used to detect which input source is used at a locale.
>>
>> https://developer.gnome.org/gnome-desktop3/stable/gnome-desktop3-Language-Utilities.html#gnome-get-input-source-from-locale
>>
>> Mainly used is at "Input Source Chooser" on System Settings / Region
>> & Language / Input Sources menu. The chooser get default input source
>> type (xkb or ibus) and engine (jp or anthy) for specified locale.
>>
>> However Input Source Chooser will retrieve "valid", normally equal
>> to "installed", engine from ibus instance, and filter out not
>> installed engine. That is, if ibus-kkc and/or ibus-anthy are not
>> installed, Input Source Chooser doesn't show up these choices (I
>> guess).
>>
>> In System Settings context, if gnome_get_input_source_from_locale()
>> will return "ibus-mozc", there is a possibility to drop
>> ubuntu_ibus_configs.patch from gnome-settings-daemon package.
>
>
> Thanks Mitsuya!
>
> What's your opinion on mozc vs. kkc? Would it be fine to switch to ibus-kkc
> as default for Japanese in Ubuntu 18.04, or are there reasons to 'fight' for
> ibus-mozc? Please see the discussion at <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/787664>.
>
>
> --
> Gunnar Hjalmarsson
> https://launchpad.net/~gunnarhj