strans
strans is a small, single-user input method for Korean, Japanese, English, emoji, and symbols. It provides one engine for IBus, XIM, and GTK 3. Vietnamese Telex is also available as a compatibility mode.
Input modes
| Key | Mode |
|---|---|
Ctrl+N |
Japanese Hiragana and Kanji conversion |
Ctrl+K |
Japanese Katakana |
Ctrl+S |
Korean Hangul (2-beolsik) |
Ctrl+T |
English |
Ctrl+V |
Vietnamese Telex |
Ctrl+E |
Emoji and symbol search |
Ctrl+H |
One-shot Hanja search |
Use Up/Down to move through candidates and PageUp/PageDown to move by
nine without wrapping. An unmodified 1-9 selects that row on the current
page. Enter confirms the selection, and 0 commits the current reading
without conversion. Tab confirms an ordinary candidate; in a temporary
Emoji or Hanja search, Tab and Shift-Tab wrap through the results. Esc
cancels composition.
Hiragana mode composes a complete reading before offering Kanji candidates. Katakana mode does not perform Kanji conversion. Emoji and Hanja searches return to the previous mode after use. Hanja lookup currently supports one modern Hangul syllable at a time.
Preedit and candidates
| Frontend | Preedit | Candidates |
|---|---|---|
| GTK 3 and IBus | inline in the client | strans popup |
| XIM PreeditCallbacks | inline through XIM callbacks | strans popup |
| XIM PreeditPosition | strans popup | strans popup |
| XIM PreeditNothing | strans popup | strans popup |
XIM supports UTF8_STRING and COMPOUND_TEXT. Position clients place the
popup from XNSpotLocation; otherwise XIM placement falls back to the bottom
of the focus or client window.
Build and test
Docker is the supported build environment:
git submodule update --init
make docker-image
make docker-build
make docker-check
Build output:
strans daemon with IBus and XIM frontends
gtk/im-strans.so GTK 3 frontend module
Use make docker-check TESTARGS=hangul to run selected C tests. Native
make all, make check, and make bench are also available when the
dependencies listed in Dockerfile are installed.
Run
The popup uses the normal system fonts found by Pango and Fontconfig; no font file argument or system-wide strans installation is required. Run it directly from the build tree:
./run.sh
# equivalently
./strans map
Pango shapes the complete string and selects glyph fallback from the system font set.
The popup renderer uses Pango/PangoCairo and Cairo. When DISPLAY is set,
strans starts its XIM worker in the same process. run.sh restarts the
existing strans process owned by the current user.
Configure clients as needed:
# XIM
export XMODIFIERS=@im=strans
# GTK 3 module
doas make -C gtk install
# IBus client example
GLFW_IM_MODULE=ibus kitty
strans provides its own IBus endpoint; ibus-daemon and fcitx are not
required. Without DISPLAY, the daemon and IBus frontend still work, but XIM
is not started and the popup is disabled.
Dictionary data
After changing an input source, regenerate and verify the dictionaries:
map/mkemoji >map/emoji.dict
map/mkhanja >map/hanja.dict
make verify-map
See map/README for Hanja import and Japanese dictionary
generation.
Licensing
Third-party license notices are in LICENSES. The repository does
not currently declare a license for the strans source as a whole.