[IME API]Some Insights from Chinese Input Methods

Hello all,

It's very pleased to see we are making a great progress in IME API.

I do appreciate the second part of the spec about Chinese Input Composer and Converter. It's true that Chinese IMEs are very similar to Japanese IMEs. In fact, Chinese IMEs usually use a Phonetic Composer based on Pinyin, which require the users to select the correct character from a candidate window. Here's what I thought after reading the IME API WD as a Chinese input method developer.

1) The compatibility of the InputMethodContext:: oncandidatewindowshow.
Most Chinese input methods use the input and candidate windows which are self-rendered, instead of windows embedded to a certain position. That's why I don't think the oncandidatewindowshow event can tell us whether a window is blocked or not correctly. Why not try Composition Event? How about hiding the suggestion when composition starts, and show it when composition ends?

2) Add support for web app to get the candidate list of IMEs.
For the current suggestion list, we use compositionupdate event to get the content of the input from the users, and construct our request only based on the search of composition string. Could we further the search request with the Candidate String, such as the case of search in Win8? I believe by this the input method and search engine would work together and give the users a better suggestion.

[cid:part1.09070203.02080100@w3.org]


3) Can we extend ime-mode in CSS and use it to hide or show the input method window?
If [2] can be solved, which means we could get a candidate suggestion list, it will make sense to hide the input method window and self-render the suggestion list, which will be very helpful for the input method in web-games. I think the current ime-mode tag is used to star or end a input method, is it possible that we use it to hide or show the input method window some day?

These suggestions comes to me after reading the IME API as well as Composition Event, Composition Interface, Input Method Context Interface. Hope it helps.

--
Song Tao
Desktop Input Method Department
Sougou Inc.