How to use Japanese input method fcitx5 for GUI programs (acme, sam, 9term...) of Plan 9 from User Space (plan9port)?

Question

I am using i3wm.

I have already declared three environment variables as below:

$ export -p | grep fcitx
declare -x GTK_IM_MODULE="fcitx"
declare -x QT_IM_MODULE="fcitx"
declare -x XMODIFIERS="@im=fcitx"
$

plan9port's manuals didn't help me. When I invoke 9 acme, 9 sam, 9 9term, they won't let me change input mode to Japanese.

Answer 1

So first of all, let's look how it's implemented. The plan9port application are based on a shim layer of relevant API. The actual window panting is done through libdraw, which doesn't have the concept of input method at all.

devdraw is the process that interact with X11 directly. And since it's using Xlib, we can simply check if it has any reference to the Xlib input method API (Entry point is XOpenIM1).

While we don't find any trace in the currently code, there's a unmerged pull request2 pops up.

Briefly reading it, it tries to incorporate input method into devdraw, which is a nice way to support it as long as commit_string interface between the devdraw and application can be simulated with keystroke, and from the code it seems it does (gfx_keystroke).

Tried this pull request on arch it seems still works. fcixt5 with plan9 on given branch The popup window will not be in the correct place, which is expected.