racket-unicode-input-method.el and "follows"

[soegaard]

Could "follows" be removed from racket-unicode-input-method.el?

racket-unicode-input-method.el

[greghendershott]

First, I'm OK making just this change, quickly, especially if it's urgently annoying you.

But before I just do that and declare success:

• I don't use this myself, so I don't have a good opinion myself.
• Even if I had a good opinion, I can imagine various users having other opinions, possibly conflicting with each other.
• Your request, plus the recent #717 make me think the "real" problems here are:
  • It should be easier for users to customize these translations.
  • Also by default there should be a "leader" or prefix key like \ -- and that should be easy to customize, too. As @sorawee pointed out.

So I think maybe the "real" answer is #718 -- which I could dust off, and finish. When I looked at the agda2 input method, it seemed very well designed w.r.t. customizing individual translation, prefixes, suffixes, inheriting from other quail input methods, etc., using a simple "tweak-all" expression with combinators. TL;DR I would like to steal that.

Any thoughts?

[soegaard]

Not urgent at all.

I actually like the current state of affairs - except for symbols which interfere with commonly used english words.

An easier way of customizing would be nice to have - but it's just a nice-to-have.

[greghendershott]

How would you feel about a "leader" (prefix) key like \, as a default?

So e.g. you'd need to type "\oint" or "\follows".

I think that would avoid all (99.9%?) conflicts.

So my working plan is to add that, as a default:

• New people learn that way, and won't need to make PR or configure anything more (due to conflicts).
• Some existing users might not mind that change. So that's easy.
• Some existing users might hate the "\" prefix. But that would be just a default, they can easily remove it. Plus all the translations would be just a default, and they can M-x customize any conflicts like "oint", themselves.

[soegaard]

Typing "\alpha" or "\alpha " would be fine, as long as I don't need to type \ twice (as in DrRacket).

[greghendershott]

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm close to merging something from the issue-718 branch, to close this issue via closing #718.

[greghendershott]

OK merged. After you update, your existing configuration should "just work" as before to activate the input method. You will need to use the \ (single backslash) prefix.

There's also a plain old command flavor of this: M-x racket-insert-symbol, which uses the minibuffer completion UI including previews of the symbols shown as annotations. (Works with the old school completions buffer UI, but especially spiffy IMHO with things like vertico.)

[greghendershott]

Online docs: https://www.racket-mode.com/#Inserting-Unicode-math-symbols