Behold the Table Driven Text Service, Part 2 (Three ways to convert!)

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2008/01/23 07:16 -08:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2008/01/23/7179692.aspx

Prior posts in the series:

• 0 (You have to start somewhere)
• 1 (Starting with a dictionary simple in every way)

That previous post introduced the MSDN_TableTextService_Simple.txt text file (right click on it and sve it somewhere if you want to use it).

And it showed one conversion technique.

So now I thought I'd cover all three techniques, and explain them a bit further....

The three types are known as Simple Conversion, Incremental Conversion, and Explicit Conversion. Each of them is described below:

Simple Conversion:

Inputted composition character shows in the small window which called "Reading Window". The Candidate Window is shown by press the conversion key (the "Space" key) which list items that match the inputted composition character.

This is what was previously shown in Part 1.

Incremental Conversion:

Inputted composition character shows in the small window which called "Reading Window". The Candidate Window is shown immediately when the user inputs a composition character. List items should match inputted composition character, and also “Incremental Conversion” shows list items for result of wild card search by inputted composition character.

Here is a nice sample, named MSDN_TableTextServiceIncremental.txt (right click and save it to your machine).

This sample profile has below conversion table;

[Text]
"1" = "Ⅰ"
"1" = "ⅰ"
"1" = "①"
"10" = "Ⅹ"
"10" = "ⅹ"
"10" = "⑩"
"11" = "Ⅺ"
"11" = "ⅺ"
"11" = "⑪"
"12" = "Ⅻ"
"12" = "ⅻ"
"12" = "⑫"

When we input "1" as a composition character, then "Incremental Conversion" shows list items for match as "1" and also shows list items match as "11" and "12" because there are result of wild card search as "1*". After listed item 4, the items are result of a wild card search. According to a wild card search, candidate list items should show combination string where the left side is a match as the inputted composition character, and right side is next expected composition character for wild card search character.

Explicit Conversion:

Inputted composition character shows up in the small window which called the "Reading Window". The Candidate Window is shown immediately when the user inputs a composition character. However, Explicit Conversion doesn’t process for wild card search.

The Look and feel of "Explicit Conversion" is similar to that of Simple Conversion, though as the above indicates it also has some behavior more like Implicit Coversion.

To be honest, these three different methods are similar enough between each other that the small behavior differences will sometmes seem like bugs to users who actually find themselves trying to use more than one of them!

Here is a nice sample, named MSDN_TableTextService_Explicit.txt (right click and save it to your machine).

When we input "1" as a composition character, then "Explicit Conversion" shows list items for match "1" only.

Now, to look at the differences between these three files as far as settings go, it is all in the [Configuration] section, which contains one of the following entries:

EXPLICIT:
ShowExplicitCandidateImmediately=1

INCREMENTAL:
ShowIncrementalCandidateImmediately=1

SIMPLE:
None of the above

Now as I said, the similarities can lead to more confusion thn you might imagine, and in general it is best to try to intuitively use the input method and see if it works the way you thought it would. I'll talk more about this later....

Coming up: what keystrokes do what, both built-in and definable.

This post brought to you by ② (U+2461, aka CIRCLED DIGIT TWO)

# Jan Kučera on Wednesday, January 30, 2008 7:51 AM:

# Ken Aarts on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 12:55 PM:

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