Since version 1.4.0, IBus got support for automatic service activation in its own D-Bus bus implementation. I’m now working on a set of UI service components running on it, including character map, virtual keyboard, and drawing pad, which can be added to IBus IME.

Here is a demo video, where ibus-m17n embeds character map and virtual keyboard in the panel through ibus-panel-extensions.

ibus-m17n in Fedora has applied several local patches in testing. Those patches sometimes conflict each other and do not apply cleanly. I used to adjust patches by editing them by hand (well actually with Emacs diff-mode, which is aware of hunk changes and updates header lines properly). Today I switched to use quilt as Debian people do.

Here are the steps I followed to migrate. First, download the tarball and patches in the git tree, extract unpatched source, and backup patches:

$ fedpkg srpm
$ tar xf ibus-m17n-1.3.2.tar.gz
$ mkdir backup
$ mv *.patch backup

Secondly, set up some envvars quilt respects:

$ export QUILT_PATCHES=..
$ export QUILT_REFRESH_ARGS="-p ab --no-timestamps --no-index"

Finally, migrate patches into the quilt format. For the first patch (Patch0: ibus-m17n-HEAD.patch):

$ cd ibus-m17n-1.3.2
$ quilt new ibus-m17n-HEAD.patch
$ diffstat ../backup/ibus-m17n-HEAD.patch
 Makefile.am  |    2
 configure.ac |   15 +++++
 src/engine.c |  155 ++++++++++++++++++++++++-----------------------------------
 3 files changed, 80 insertions(+), 92 deletions(-)
$ quilt add Makefile.am configure.ac src/engine.c
$ patch -p1 < ../backup/ibus-m17n-HEAD.patch
$ quilt refresh

Now I have ibus-m17n-HEAD.patch (in quilt format) in the upper directory. I could proceed to the next patch:

$ quilt new ibus-m17n-stsreq.patch
$ diffstat ...; quilt add ...; patch ...; quilt refresh

Once all patches are migrated, I could edit them individually:

$ quilt applied
../ibus-m17n-HEAD.patch
../ibus-m17n-stsreq.patch
../ibus-m17n-xkb-options.patch
../ibus-m17n-xx-icon-symbol.patch
../ibus-m17n-iok.patch
$ quilt pop
 Removing patch ../patches/ibus-m17n-iok.patch
 Restoring src/engine.c

 Now at patch ../ibus-m17n-xx-icon-symbol.patch
$ vi src/m17nutil.c ... # edit the code
$ quilt refresh # refresh the patch
$ quilt push

Of course, the package builds without patch conflicts:

$ cd ..
$ fedpkg srpm
$ SHELL=/bin/sh mock -r fedora-rawhide-x86_64 --rebuild ibus-m17n-1.3.2-6.fc16.src.rpm
 ...
 INFO: Done(ibus-m17n-1.3.2-6.fc16.src.rpm) Config(fedora-rawhide-x86_64) 2 minutes 23 seconds
 INFO: Results and/or logs in: /var/lib/mock/fedora-rawhide-x86_64/result
 State Changed: end

TIP: to keep series file (the quilt index file) after fedpkg import, mark it as SourceX in spec.

In the previous post, I wrote about ibus-gucharmap, a character-map based Unicode input engine. While making it usable this week, I came across some thoughts on Unicode input on GNU/Linux desktop.

Currently there are a couple of options to type Unicode characters.

1. Cut and paste from a character map application like Gucharmap
2. Input codepoint directly with ibus-rawcode or GTK default IM

Each of these options has its pros and cons. With the option #1, a user can easily browse Unicode characters. However, for input she is required to perform a number of interactions with desktop, using both keyboard and mouse, switching focus between application windows. With the option #2, the user can do everything without mouse but she needs to know the codepoint in advance.

So the design goals of ibus-gucharmap are:

• Keyboard-only operation
• Quick access to the Unicode character map

Here is the current interaction flow to input a ☣ (U+2623 BIOHAZARD SIGN). When a user enables the IME with ‘Ctrl+Space’, she will see the charmap view:

Then after she types some characters, the view will be changed to display the search results:

Here, by hitting ‘Return’ on the search results, she will get the character inserted into the target application and see the IME window is changed back to the charmap view with the Unicode block “Miscellaneous Symbols” (which includes U+2623) selected:

At this point, the user can also input ☢ (U+2622 RADIOACTIVE SIGN) with ‘Left’ and ‘Return’.

You could try this feature with 1.3.99.20110624-1 (or later) RPM.

I wrote a small IBus engine called ibus-gucharmap to input exotic characters in Unicode. The code is still under development but you can try a test package.

It is written in Vala and internally uses Gucharmap widgets. I wonder this might be the first real IME written in Vala, while IBus got Vala binding quite some time. I’m impressed that it makes GObject-based native application development much easier.