Saturday 29 November 2008

HOWTO: stop imsetting-daemon im-info-daemon

I really don't know how many people will switch between more than 2 input methods, while imsettings, as a project, just provide such a function.
This is useless to me, and costing almost 7m memory when booting up fedora.

This is the solution to stop it, and still keeping scim in your system.

Put 'DISABLE_IMSETTINGS=true' in the first line of '/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/50-xinput.sh'.


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IMSettings
==============
IMSettings is a framework that delivers Input Method
settings and applies the changes immediately. so it will
takes an effect without restarting applications and the
desktop.

Background
==============
Input Method is used to input some dozens of characters that
can't be represented with ASCII characters, with some
framework such as XIM and SCIM via GTK+/Qt
immodule. particularly which to handle languages that is a
bit complex to do the same thing with the keyboard layout
such as XKB. In the past, those frameworks has been applied
through the environment variables, such as XMODIFIERS and
GTK_IM_MODULE. and can't be influenced immediately and can't
be without restarting the desktop because of its nature -
it's being inherited from the parent process unless it's
being brought up with the obvious thing from the terminal
say. Also, there are no such framework to bring up the
necessary process at the run time - of course anyone could
runs it manually though, it's totally out of focus on this
project.

Features
============
* Provide the information of Input Method through IMSettings
* Provide the DBus service to start/stop process of Input
Method
* Provide the way to apply Input Method to applications
immediately

Scope
=========
IMSettings may helps when:

* you may want to disable Input Method entirely to use
features on any applications, which actually can't use
with Input Method because of the key conflicting.
* you may try another Input Method without closing current
desktop session.
* someone may wants to borrow your desktop temporarily,
which uses different Input Method.
* the appropriate Input Methods needs to be installed by
default regardless of you use, such as Live image.

Supported Toolkits
======================
* GTK+ (with GConf backend)
* Xfce (with GConf backend and a plugin for xfce-mcs-manager)
* X (with IMSettings XIM server; require libgxim)

Information files for Input Method
======================================
To make Input Methods available from IMSettings, every Input
Methods that hopes so has to have the information file to
let IMSettings know. those files is usually put under a
directory where you can change the default value with
--with-xinputdir. the filename has to contain .conf or
something that you can also change the default value with
--with-xinput-suffix to avoid listing every Input Methods
that might not work for some languages. Input Methods
doesn't support multiple languages such as XIM doesn't have
to have .conf suffix or so. xim.conf can deals with such
configuration files properly for appropriate languages
according to current locale.

Available parameters
=======================

The following parameters can be described as the shell
environment variables like FOO=BAR in the information file.

* AUXILIARY_PROGRAM=

An optional program that may want to bring up for Input
Method, such as the panel and the toolbar and so on.

* AUXILIARY_ARGS=

A list of command line options for AUXILIARY_PROGRAM.

* GTK_IM_MODULE=

GTK+ immodule name that want to use.

* ICON=

An icon file to use in GUI.

* IMSETTINGS_IGNORE_ME=

A parameter to hide Input Method from the inventory. you
however can still take an action against such Input Method
via IMSettings.

* LONG_DESC=

An optional long description to explain what this Input
Method is.

* PREFERENCE_PROGRAM=

An optional program that set up Input Method. IMSettings
itself do nothing on this parameter. but other tools, such
as im-chooser will take an action for that.

* PREFERENCE_ARGS=

A list of command line options for PREFERENCE_PROGRAM.

* QT_IM_MODULE=

Qt immodule name that want to use.

* SHORT_DESC=

An optional short description to explain what this Input
Method is. this variable is also sued for the key to do
something on IMSettings. e.g. to start/stop Input Method
and get the information and so on. so this parameter has
to be unique.

* XIM=

This variable is used for XIM. actually it looks like
XMODIFIERS=@im=$XIM.

* XIM_PROGRAM=

A XIM server be brought up to communicate through XIM
protocol.

* XIM_ARGS=

A list of command line options for XIM_PROGRAM.

Other variables used in xinput.sh
====================================

* DISABLE_IMSETTINGS=

If you want to disable imsettings feature entirely, set true. you'll
miss the feature able to change IM on demand but just need to reboot
or restart the desktop after changing something.

* IMSETTINGS_DISABLE_DESKTOP_CHECK=

If your desktop has XSETTINGS manager support and you're sure it also
supports imsettings, please file a bug to imsettings. and set true
temporarily to ignore checking the desktop.

Processes
============

* im-settings-daemon

A DBus service that provide a facility to start/stop IM processes.

* im-info-daemon

A DBus service that provide Input Method information.

* gconf-im-settings-daemon

A DBus service that provide a bridge to communicate GTK+ through GConf.

* imsettings-xim

A XIM bridge between client applications and real XIM server.

* imsettings-applet

An applet that provides a facility of changing IM temporarily. this also
supports XIM bridge. if imsettings-xim is running, this applet will sends
a signal to be terminated.

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