Fedora 7: SCIM Launch Problem

[Warren Togami]

April 16th there was a problematic comps change to F7 that necessitated
associated other changes.

FC6 and RHEL5 Behavior
======================
- scim packages were installed only if you chose languages that need it
during install, or used groupinstall on a language.
- If scim is installed, it automatically runs in the desktop of any
language.
- Enabled-by-default is potentially annoying to non-SCIM users.
However, since it is not installed by default, those users did not
complain so much.  Users who didn't want it were told to uninstall it
(which matches Windows and Mac behavior.)
- im-chooser provided a way for the user to override the system's
setting, to disable SCIM, or choose a different IM software for that
user's desktop.

Yesterday's Change
==================
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=229742
We attempted to solve this rare groupremove problem by making SCIM
install with the base-x group.  This means that *ALL* Fedora desktop
installations will have SCIM both installed and running.

Due to the enabled-by-default behavior, SCIM annoys non-SCIM users who
accidentally hit SCIM hotkeys, popping up the language bar or inputting
unwanted characters.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=235435
In an attempt to mitigate this enabled-by-default behavior, this change
was hastily made without being thoroughly thought through.  It disables
the SCIM activation hotkey (CTRL-Space) if you login to a new user
profile for the first time with a language that doesn't normally need SCIM.

Disabling the hotkey by default is problematic:
===============================================
- This creates inconsistent behavior between SCIM user profiles created
at different times, depending on what locale and version of Fedora was
running at the time.  (Source of support and debugging confusion.)
- This forces certain users to use a confusingly disjoint configuration
within SCIM Setup, which is separate from im-chooser.  (User confusion)
- This still has an unnecessary memory footprint for users who
absolutely never need SCIM.

Solution
========
Jeremy Katz, the RH Desktop team and I have agreed upon the following.

1) Undo the hack made in Bug #235435.
2) Change SCIM's automatic launching to be locale specific.  For
example, Asian languages are in a SCIM automatic list, so launch
automatically in those languages.  Do not launch SCIM automatically in
other languages.
3) Modify im-chooser to allow the user to override the automatic SCIM
launch behavior.  im-chooser should offer something like:
    * Always Use [SCIM]
    * Follow the system-wide configuration [SCIM]
    * Never use input methods

"Follow the system-wide configuration [SCIM]" would be the default for
all users.  The user can then choose to explicitly override, to enable
or disable input methods independently of their locale.

Can we please implement this before Fedora 7?  The SCIM running by
default in all desktop languages is unacceptable, and the hack in Bug
#235435 confuses the issue, hiding the real problem.

We are willing to be flexible during the freeze to fix this.

Warren Togami
wtogami at redhat.com