Preedit Styles

Many languages require multiple key strokes to form a single display character, syllable, symbol, ideogram, or other item. The status area needs to display input keystrokes for these languages. For the Asian OpenWindows environment, this intermediate display area is called the preedit area. The preedit area displays intermediate formations of input keystrokes while they are held in a buffer before being committed, that is, before being sent to the insertion point in the text stream to the next program operation or the application.

The four available styles of preedit area positioning are discussed in the following sections. You can set the style by placing one of the following lines in the .OWdefaults resource file:

OpenWindows.PreeditStyle.locale: onTheSpot
OpenWindows.PreeditStyle.locale: overTheSpot
OpenWindows.PreeditStyle.locale: rootWindow
OpenWindows.PreeditStyle.locale: none

The preedit areas work the same internally; only their relation to the rest of the display differs.