Technical data

• The phrase input mechanism available in the desktop environment
Because terminal emulation windows do not implement the 26th line
of a terminal screen, the SIM service does not work correctly in these
windows. In a windows desktop environment, phrase input, along with
other kinds of input methods, is supported by the input method server
for the Chinese and Korean languages. Therefore, you enter phrases by
invoking the Input Method application and selecting the phrase item.
Using the Chinese and Korean input method servers, you can enter
individual phrases and their codes for conversion and reuse as described
in the Technical Reference manuals for those languages. You can also use
the Phrase Utility to create and maintain a phrase database as described
in this appendix.
Table B–1 lists and describes basic terms associated with phrase input.
Table B–1: Phrase Input Definitions
Term Description
Phrase The string for the phrase that you want to retrieve. Each
phrase is a string of any characters in the codeset of the current
locale and can be a maximum of 80 bytes in length.
Phrase code The keyword that you enter to retrieve a phrase. Each phrase
code is a string of up to 8 ASCII alphanumeric characters.
Class A group of logically related phrases. Each class has an identifier
that is a string of up to 8 ASCII characters.
Database A set of two files: the phrase data file
phrase.dat and the class
data file class.dat. If a phrase database is moved from one
directory to another, the two data files must be moved together.
There are two types of phrase databases: system and user. The
system database is shared by all users on the system and is
maintained by the system administrator. User databases are
defined and maintained by individual users.
Pathnames for the system and user phrase database directories
are set in the /var/i18n/conf/cp_dirs file. By default, this
file sets the pathname for the system phrase database directory
to be /var/i18n/sim and for the user phrase database directory
to be $HOME/.sim. See the
Writing Software for the International
Market manual for more information on the cp_dirs file.
Phrase database files are locale specific and reside in locale
directories subordinate to the default path. For example, an
individual user might create and maintain the following sets of
files to support two different locales:
$HOME/.sim/zh_TW.big5/phrase.dat
$HOME/.sim/zh_TW.big5/class.dat
$HOME/.sim/zh_TW.dechanyu/phrase.dat
$HOME/.sim/zh_TW.dechanyu/class.dat
B–2 Phrase Utility