README.org

Overview

Yeis, pronounced yes, is a more advanced input method switcher for Emacs.

It pretends to:

1. Transform text as if it had been inserted by any non-CJK input method;
2. Auto set the input method and auto transform text as it’s typed (yeis-mode);

Demo

Let’s see it in action, for the sake of clarity. I’ll be demonstrating it with the russian input method selected (ЙЦУКЕН).

Manual Transformation

Transform the previous word, the one to the left of the cursor, by calling yeis-transform-previous-word. You can either call it with M-x or you can set bind it to a key, such as C-| (see instructions below).

When you pass a prefix argument n, it transforms the last n words.

The following commands are equivalent ways to transforming 3 words that come before the cursor.

• M-3 C-|
• C-u 3 C-|

Notice that you can always toggle your input method by calling toggle-input-method (the default keybinding is C-\).

Yeis-mode

By activating yeis-mode, you’ll get auto transformation and auto input method selection. It follows a DWIM (do-what-I-mean) philosophy.

Note that this is still under development, therefore unwanted behaviour will certainly happen. You can always call yeis-transform-previous-word to make the necessary corrections.

Quickstart

git clone https://github.com/aadcg/emacs-yeis.git

Please find in the table below the string that identifies the input method you want to use.

Here’s what you need to add to your init.el:

;; yeis main file (load-file "/fullpath/to/yeis.el")

;; input methods' definitions (load-file
"/fullpath/to/robin-packages.el")

;; loads the defined input methods (load-file
"/fullpath/to/x-leim-list.el")

;; activate the desired input method, for instance robin-russian (setq
default-input-method "robin-russian") (setq-default
robin-current-package-name "robin-russian")

;; this is necessary if you want to use yeis minor mode (setq
yeis-path-plain-word-list "/fullpath/to/wordlist/of/this/repo")

;; since C-\ is bind to `toggle-input-method', this seems a good choice
(global-set-key (kbd "C-|") 'yeis-transform-previous-word)

Input methods

At the moment the following input methods are supported:

Name	Description
robin-russian	US qwerty <-> russian ЙЦУКЕН
robin-russian-dvorak	US dvorak <-> russian ЙЦУКЕН
robin-russian-workman	US workman <-> russian ЙЦУКЕН
robin-greek	US qwerty <-> Greek

It’s trivial to add more. Let me know about your needs or, better yet, send me a patch.

Please note that I have only tested yeis-mode for the first one on the above list.

Roadmap

• Add support for more input methods out of the box (trivial task);
• Improve yeis-mode (namely it should take into account that users can make typos);
• Write unit tests (following a property-based philosophy);
• Write integration tests with the most common words;
• Better integration with GNU Aspell (can it check if a certain prefix exists in a given dictionary?)

Rant about input methods

If your way of life is to live inside of Emacs, then you know how annoying it is when you select a non QWERTY input method in your OS. Say you have the russian input method active. Then you go to Emacs, you hit C-g and the minibuffer greets you with:

C-п is undefined

Emacs wants us to have a QWERTY input method enabled. When in need of another one, we should make use of its multilingual features (M-x set-input-method). That way, keybindings will still work since keypresses prefixed by Meta or Control are escaped (i.e. not transformed). On the other hand, it is a fact that we can’t (yet) do everything in Emacs. So, until that day of plenitude comes, we shall need to change the input method in the operating system we’re running (say you want to write in Russian in your browser). A possible solution is to use IBus (the default input method framework for GNOME). Out of the box, you get input methods selected per application. Sweet! Some people have totally different approaches - take a look at reverse-im and fix-input. I shall not even go in there.

Let’s now talk about input methods within Emacs. It supports insertion of multilingual text through Quail (have a look at quail.el) - indeed, a beautiful piece of software, but it inherits unnecessary complexity when the users don’t use a CJK input method. I found out is that there’s a lighter alternative to Quail - Robin. The latter, provides transformation to and from any (non-CJK) input method out of the box!

What Yeis wants to achieve within Emacs might be comparable to what xneur achieves for GNU/Linux.

Thanks

John Lawler for this english wordlist.

To get wordlists take a look here.

vlarya2 for this russian wordlist.

Everyone at the Emacs (english) Telegram group.