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sokuban

Member

Registered: 2006-11-11

Posts: 412

[SOLVED]Editing IME tables (Dvorak compatibility problem)

So yesterday I switched to Dvorak.

I've had a lot of compatibility problems (vim, games, etc) but this is the only one I can't solve by myself.

CJK input.

CJK IME characters are not mapped to physical keys, but they are mapped to their qwerty counterparts. The problem is, the keyboards were designed to be used with the keys mapped to their qwerty positions. So all the keyboards get messed up.

If it is a bit unclear, here is an example:

Random Korean text: 안녕하세요
What comes out when you push the same buttons on the dvorak keyboard: ㄷ새해댜쇼딜
The keys (in qwerty) that are pushed to give that: dkssudgktpdy

Remember that Korean isn't a romanized input method. On a korean keyboard you will see Korean characters printed on each key and you push that key to build characters on screen.

Japanese is fine since I use Romaji (this might change, I'm thinking of learning thumbshift); Cangie (Chinese) is probbably doable, but I learned it in qwerty, and I don't want to learn it in dvorak again if there are no ergonomic benefits; Korean is impossible in dvorak since the organization is all messed up and unlike Cangjie, you learn the 2bul keyboard by associating characters to their position on the keyboard, not by associating characters to their qwerty counterpart.

You are probbably wondering why I'm using the unergonomic 2bul while I'm taking the trouble to switch to dvorak, but I don't type Korean that much and I'm used to 2bul. Besides, I'd have the same problem no matter what keyboard I use. (Unless I used a Romanized method, but I don't want to.)

I use the "scim-hangul" package for Korean, and "scim-tables" package for Chinese.

Right now I set my numpad division key to be the switcher between qwerty and dvorak (I have a laptop keyboard so its the / key with fn). I tried setting it to ctrl+space (the combo I use to initiate the IME) but then the IME won't initiate and only my keyboard layout would change. Also I don't like having a switcher, because then I get lazy and start typing in qwerty. (Heck I'm in qwerty now >_<)

So I'd prefer it if I could manually edit the data tables of the ime to make "eto" (the dvorak version of "dks") correspond to "안" and the same for my Chinese input.

The funny thing is, only my Japanese IME lets me edit the input tables through scim setup. Editing "scim-tables" (for Chinese) is probbably possible if I can understand this website:

http://www.scim-im.org/development/cont … cim_tables

But I have no clue how to edit the most important Korean tables. I know there is a Korean IME in "scim-tables", but the "scim-hangul" one is much better.

EDIT: Okay so in scim's config you can select the dvorak keyboard. Then everything works fine.

Last edited by sokuban (2009-01-01 17:43:52)