1. Introduction of miniChinput package

The miniChinput project began from May 2001. This package is based on the 
Chinput package version 3.0.1 and Unicon 3.0. Both XIM server and IM modules 
parts are modified to make the miniChinput fit into a smaller package. Also 
it was standardized by using the autoconf tools. Some bugs of the old Chinput 
and Unicon are fixed and new features are added.

After the alpha version of miniChinput published by Bo Zhang, Zengxu Yang 
did lots of maintaining works for it, and published 0.0.1-0.0.3 versions. 
Then RedHat people adopted miniChinput, and made lots of efforts on it, those 
people including Yukihiro Nakai, Tim Powers, Havoc Pennington, and Yu Shao. 

In March 2003, miniChinput jointed to the sourceforge family.

2. Introduction of Chinput

Chinput is an XIM (X Input Method) server which is widely used to perform
Chinese input under X Window system. It is originally developed by Mingjian Yu
and other programmers in early days; while now it is maintained by the
miniChinput Project.

The Chinput design follows the Xi18N standard and locale mechanism. You should
have locale supported in your system C library and installed before you run 
chinput.  Chinput allows you to input the Chinese characters to an X client 
which supports XIM mechanism.

Currently, Chinput supports gb2312, gbk, gb18030, and big5 (used in Taiwan)
character set/encodings. The input methods currently supported are:

gb* character set:
ZNPY PY SHP WB CODE

big5 character set:
PY CangJie

3. History of Chinput and other Chinese Input Methods for GB world.

Chinese Input softwares developed for X window system were as early as i
mid 90's.  Till 1998, a quite stable software, called Chinput 1.4, was 
published by Mingjian Yu.  Some other softwares, which are somehow based one 
Chinput, were also published later. Those early day's implementations are 
based on the "PRELOAD" mechanism.  The input software intercept the 
communication between X clients and servers, and re-explain the DISPLAY/INPUT 
related X-lib functions. 

The later version of Chinput adopted the IMdkit, which is a XIM server 
developing kit developed by some Japenese team. Chinput version 3.0.0 and 
3.0.1 are using XIM standard and provide Input Service to the XIM clients. 
However, those new versions dropped their own IM modules and using the IM 
modules of a console Chinese supporter, called Unicon. 

Unicon was developed by the TurboLinux group, which had some kernel level 
Chinese support, and also had several Chinese input modules collected from 
some other earlier Chinese related softwares, such as CXterm, CCE, etc.

In parallel, some efforts were made for Big5 encoded Chinese input. The Xcin 
project has lots of documents about the early day's of Big5 inputing.

4. Documents

INSTALL: miniChinput install guide.
USAGE:   miniChinput usage guide.
COPYING: GNU General Public License.
BUGS:    Problems of miniChinput.
TODO:    Todo list of miniChinput.


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miniChinput project: <http://sourceforge.net/projects/minichinput>
Bo Zhang             <http://scf.usc.edu/~bozhang>
                     <bozhang@usc.edu>
