[i18n] Input Method and Fonts improvements for Gutsy

[Ming Hua]

On Tue, Aug 07, 2007 at 08:31:05PM +0200, Michael Vogt wrote:
> This is done via a dependency for language-support-$lang to im-switch
> and the matching scim plugin/table packages. Those have a im-switch
> configuration that will enable scim for the matching locale. 
> 
> It has been a while that I looked into the default scim configrations
> in the various packages (e.g. scim-pinyin), someone going through them
> would really be good to see what we still need, what can be merged
> with debian and what is no longer needed.

I haven't looked into Ubuntu's SCIM-related packages for a while,
either, but my recollection is that the im-switch settings in different
packages, as well as different releases, are highly inconsistent.

The following are all from the top of my head, so probably need some
fact checking before taken seriously:

1. The scim package's im-switch setting has been changing from release
to release.  I did the initial work in dapper release cycle, and it was
then heavily modified before dapper release.  This is before Debian
adding im-switch support for its scim package.  For edgy and feisty,
there are also some other big changes.  For gutsy right now, Ubuntu's
package dropped all the previous changes and is in sync with Debian.

2. Ubuntu's scim-pinyin, scim-chewing, and scim-hangul all have their
own im-switch settings.  In Debian none of these packages have its own,
all im-switch setting are done in scim package.

The whole situation is only made more complicated by the fact that those
im-switch settings reside in /etc/ and are conffiles.  As far as I know
there is no effort to preserve user's im-switch setting during upgrade.

I added the initial im-switch support in Ubuntu for scim and
scim-hangul.  And I care about upgradability a lot.  So I am willing to
look at these two packages, especially scim-hangul (since it hasn't been
changed since I added the im-switch support).  I am not sure I am going
to have time to do so in gutsy though (it's fine for scim-hangul if we
do nothing in gutsy).  I had planned to raise this issue in gutsy+1,
since we can take care of upgrading from gutsy and dapper (assuming
gutsy+1 is LTS) at the same time.

Ming
2007.08.10