[Lexicog] Korean and Toolbox

[Martin Hosken]

Dear Benjamin,

I am replying to your original question since it states the problem the
best and is easiest for me to answer. My apologies to all for a somewhat
technical and off topic post, but I think that it may be of benefit to a
number of Toolbox users to understand the issues involved.

>Has anyone had luck getting Korean to work in Toolbox (or even Shoebox)?

Yes and no. Toolbox, no and Shoebox, somewhat.

>I downloaded Toolbox and discovered I needed Keyman. But it appears there
is
no Korean keyboard for Keyman out there.

In Windows a program may register itself as being an ANSI application that
receives 8-bit ANSI (system codepage) keyboard events or as a Unicode
application that receives keyboard events in Unicode. Win 9x programs are
all ANSI applications, and only with Win2K and above (well WinNT and above,
but who uses that? :) do applications have the choice. Shoebox and Toolbox
were both designed for Win 9x and so are both ANSI applications and receive
keyboard messages in the system codepage.

Toolbox has been further enhanced to interact with Keyman via a special
mechanism to allow Keyman only (any keyboard generator that generates
WM_UNICHAR messages, but Keyman is the only one I know of) to transfer
Unicode keyboard messages. Hence the ability to type Unicode using Keyman
only. And without a Korean Keyman keyboard you are going to be stuck.

But there is possibly another way around this, which I haven't tested. That
is to set your system codepage to be Korean and to use a multi-byte
encoding for Korean. This would mean that non-Korean fields using any kind
of upper ASCII in your database would need to be converted to Unicode and
typed using Keyman. It also means that anyone using your database would
need to have the same system codepage or else you would need to convert
your data to Unicode for them and then they wouldn't be able to edit it.
Alternatively, if they can't read Korean, they could use any old codepage
and the Korean would come up as jibberish, but not be damaged.

>To confuse the issue further, under the Keyman Configuration screen,
Korean
is listed as having an IME keyboard with a note below saying, "You cannot
associate a Keyman keyboard with this layout because it is an IME".

I have asked whether Keyman can help with the problem of ANSI vs Unicode
applications and the answer is that the conversion happens very deep in
Windows and Keyman can't provide a solution for IMEs :(

>The Keyman site has a Chinese keyboard, so I don't understand what all
this means.

This, not very useable, keyboard is an example to show what might be
possible within Keyman, but it is not interacting with an external IME.

>Can anyone shed some light on this?

I hope this makes better sense for you of what is going on. The Busemans
are very aware of the issue and are working to produce a Win2K+ version of
Toolbox that will work with IMEs, but don't hold your breath since it is
not as easy as people make out, to make the switch.

GB,
Martin




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