[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Bluetooth keyboard update

[From: Aaron Levinson]

Regarding the matter of the xim bug, it seems that the proper approach is
to fix the bug in the next firmware release.  I imagine that in order to
replace the im-xim.so file, super-user privileges are required.

Tomas:  as an interim solution, perhaps you could provide an alternate 
version of the xim binary on your homepage, and anyone with super-user 
privileges could replace the firmware-provided version with the new 
version.

There may also be a way to re-register the "GtkIMContextXIM" type name 
with a different GTypeInfo (i.e. overwrite the old settings), and if this 
could be done, then it probably could be handled in the form of a 
user-installable package.

On another note, if a developer were to create a new input method, how
would the developer cause it to be added to the list of available input
methods?  Since packages may only install their contents to
/var/lib/install, how is GTK supposed to "see" this new library?  In an
e-mail to the list from earlier this month
(http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/maemo/developers/3389?search_string=input%20method;#3389
), Tomas stated that he would like to see open source alternative GTK
input methods developed for Maemo, and that the IM interface is
well-defined in GTK.  The interface is well-defined in GTK, but it is
unclear if the infrastructure is currently available in the maemo platform
for getting this input method installed.  It seems that the proper
location to install a new input method module is the "immodule" directory
under /usr/lib/gtk-<version>/<version> , but this directory is only
writable by root.  The gtk.immodules file could be modified, but again,
this file is only writable by root.  I guess that the GTK_IM_MODULE_FILE
environment variable could be set on behalf of the user, but this seems
like a bit of a kludge.  And then there is the update-gtk-immodules script 
in /usr/sbin, but this script won't work without super-user privileges.  
Perhaps the proper solution is to add update-gtk-immodules to /etc/sudoers 
.

Aaron

> Xim, which is just another gtk input method, is the culprit filtering 
> out the multibyte characters. It seems to want to perform a conversion 
> from some default charset to utf-8 and fails. I can confirm that if you 
> use a less clever input method, or modify xim to just commit the keys 
> directly, you do in fact get multibyte characters in stock GTK widgets. 
> That means the problem is fixable, although not necessarily in a clean 
> way by simply installing an application installer package such as the 
> Bluetooth plugin.