[whatwg] Proposal in supporting the writing of "Arabizi"

[Sami Eljabali]

By not moving IME's off OSes, you're asking every OS connecting to the
internet to support this feature. Netbooks for example, may just have a
native web browser on it. Would its OS then need to implement its own IME
for a few languages for their entry? Instead its web browser could just
support the input field, given they can render them.


On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 5:17 PM, Mark Callow <callow_mark at hicorp.co.jp>wrote:

> Why do you feel it is necessary to sway IME's off OSes? As far as I know
> the OS ones are all freely downloadable or included in OS distributions.
> The downloadable ones are not even as hard to find as they used to be.
> They're needed for all text input fields across the system. They're
> complicated enough that I wouldn't want to have to learn different ones
> in different applications.
>
> I quite agree about the dictionaries and not just for IMEs. I have a
> ridiculous number of English dictionaries installed on my system, e.g.,
> one in Thunderbird, one in Firefox, one in MS Office, one in XMLMind,
> one in Foxit Reader plus a host of others. I also have separate copies
> of the _same_ Japanese dictionaries in Thunderbird and Firefox for use
> by the Rikaichan plug-in. However having dictionary look-up only
> available as a network service is a very dangerous way to go from the
> perspective of civil rights and liberties. It needs to be a service
> available locally perhaps with an option to go to the network.
>
> Regards
>
>    -Mark
>
>
> On 05/12/2011 07:42, Sami Eljabali wrote:
> > Thanks Mark for the clarification, and thanks all for the feedback. To
> the
> > valid point however, regarding the result of bloated web browsers storing
> > each language's dictionary, I feel more thought could be put in swaying
> > IME's off OSs, as it is limiting in availability for all. That said,
> > couldn't we have have  'dictionary look-ups' be served as a service? It
> > could follow the search services model available today, where users
> choose
> > their provider to be used by the browser itself. This would allow room
> for
> > providers to even emerge given possible incentives or others including
> > noting trends circulating via users speaking x,y, or z languages. Worst
> > case, one could look into a peer-to-peer solution, where users donate
> their
> > bandwidth/cpu for others. Your thoughts on this are appreciated.
>