Show HN: Using Vim as an input method editor (IME) for X11 apps

132 points

4 years ago

As a Vim user, I often use Vim to write some text and then copy & paste it into another text field of GUI apps (e.g. browsers, chat apps, etc.), because almost all of these text fields provide only very basic editing functions.

A while ago, I came up with an idea: what if we could use Vim as an IME?

Ordinary IMEs are used to input some non-English characters, but the essential functions of IME are 1) receiving a keyboard sequence 2) process the key sequence and outputting a text

These functions are the same as text editor's. So I thought implementing an IME that can be used with Vim keybindings could be a good solution for the above problem.

After that I learned mechanisms of IME for Linux desktop and tried to develop an experimental IME.

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