How to make your application support Input method under Linux
As an Linux application developer, one might not aware that there could be certain effort required to support Input Method (or Input Method Editor, usually referred as IME) under Linux.
[...]
Even if you are not aware, you are probably already using it in daily life. For example, the virtual keyboard on your smart phone is a form of input method. You may noticed that the virtual keyboard allows you to type something, and gives you a list of words based on what you already partially typed. That is a very simple use case of input method. But for CJKV (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese) users, Input method is necessary for them to type their own language properly. Basically imagine this: you only have 26 English key on the keyboard, how could you type thousands of different Chinese characters by a physical keyboard with only limited keys? The answers, using a mapping that maps a sequence of key into certain characters. In order to make it easy to memorize, usually such mapping is similar to what is called Transliteration , or directly use an existing Romanization system.