New XCIN is Under Development

These are the under development xcin packages, which means that they might be unstable, might have many bugs, or might just crash in some circumstance. On the other hand, the most recent and new implementations will appear here, and possibly known bugs will be fixed here. In any case, we are welcome you to experience these new releases. If you want to try, here are some suggestions:

Please don't install the unstable releases into your default prefix and overwrite your original version directly, in case that the new version is broken and cannot work in your box. If you want to do that, please make sure that you have backuped your original version and you have the ability to recover it when needed.
Instead of installing them into the default path, you can install them into other directory and try them. For example, to install them into your $HOME/install/, you can just provide the following configure and compiling commands:
- configure libtabe:
  configure --prefix=$HOME/install --enable-shared
  make install
- configure xcin:
  configure --prefix=$HOME/install --with-extra-prefix=$HOME/install --enable-debug
  make install
When testing, use the following commands to start program:
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/install
export LC_CTYPE=<your locale name>
$HOME/install/bin/xcin &

If you find that xcin works strange and you want to help to debug, you may compile xcin with --enable-debug configuring option and run xcin with the command: xcin -v n where n is a number. Increasing this number will produce more verbose messages. This will be helpful to diagnose the origin of the problem.

If you are happy with the new version and what to install it into your default path, you can just configure them again with the prefix you want, and re-make them. If you feel that the new version has a lot of trouble with you, you can just remove the $HOME/install directory. But please, if you really have trouble or comments, please report to us ;-))

The Snapshot

The newest snapshot is always available in the xcin cvs. For testers it is encouraged to update your local cvs tree regularly in order to keep the newest updating. The new changes and discussions of the xcin source code are also posted in the xcin mailing list. So, please read if you need the news and information.

Besides these, we also have the snapshot tarball releases during the development, which is more convenient to download and install for testing. They are always available in the devel subdirectory in the xcin ftp site. The newest release is

The new features of the releases include the following:

2.5.3.pre2:
- Add xcin man page.
- Change xim.c: xim_commit(), commit_string(): to collect strings and commit at once.
- Redesign gui_overspot:
  - Use the single gui_overspot window for all the clients.
  - Monitor the XConfigureEvent & XDestroyNotifyEvent for all the clients.
  - Get client window position only when XConfigureEvent comes.
  - Delete the check_ic_exist().
- Merge patches of Big5HKSCS .cin, xcinrc, etc from Anthony Fok <anthony@thizlinux.com>, ThizLinux Laboratory Ltd.
- libtabe: tsi.db and yin.db moved to $(prefix)/lib/tabe/
2.5.3.pre1:
- Add libtool for portable shared lib building.
- Add NetBSD porting patches.
- Merge new xcintool/ and xcintool.h; Redesign IM module loading archetecture (including support of HP-UX).
- Porting for libtabe changes: for shared db files.
- Change the xcin termination policy, such that the XIM server/clients would be more stable during the exiting of the WM/desktops.
- Add patch of HINT_TSI & HINT_SEL for gen_inp. (very useful for phone.cin IM).

The Todo List of the development includes (suggested by T.H.Hsieh <thhsieh@linux.org.tw>) (discussions):

Merge gui_main.c and gui_main2.c: The width and height of the xcin main window could be controlled by geometry argument.
Locale name and character set aliasing in xcinrc.
Automatically generate the xcinrc for specific plateform when installation.
Design the charset handling system; Use UCS4 as the internal character handling.
Redesign the .cin ==> .tab format in gen_inp and cin2tab.
Redesign IM module API.
xcinrc reload support; charset alias (locale alias).
Generalize the GUI interface to the IM modules.
XIM: enable commit for keysym.
Mouse copy/paste of xcin window contents into other windows.
Redesign the fontset handling subsystem and combine it with the new charset handling system
XCIN multiple locale support.
Port bimsphone to use new facilities of libtabe: multiple db.
New features of gen_inp (suggested by Waily <waily@xxxopen.net>) (discussions):
- Show all the possible keystrokes of the committed character.
- Counting the number of committed characters and timing.
- Add phrase dynamically???
- Europin IM, Capital keystroke.
Simplify and more configurable of the Hot-key, Quick-keys.

gen_inp: HINTTSI: configurable of Alt- key.

Encoding converting layer between input/output.
Other communicating channels: selescion and X property.
OffTheSpot and OnTheSpot input styles support.