I'm looking into learning Chinese!
So I set up a pinyin IME. I think it's the fcitx5-chinese-addons one. Worked pretty well... until I realized it was giving us simplified. And I can't find a switch to put it into traditional mode. There's nothing in the menu. The "configure simplified/traditional chinese conversion" button in the settings uh... just doesn't work.
So I tried rime.
Worked beautifully! Until I went to poke its settings and it had none. It did have an "open user dir" button... and... it's FULL OF YAML. Nope. I'm not putting spaces for indentation in our configuration files. Out the window you go.
Then I tried chewing. It uh... it's definitely not pinyin.
This really should not be this hard... how the heck do we type traditional chinese with pinyin (without being forced to use YAML)?
(OS info: we're running Debian stable/testing (stable on laptop, testing on desktop) with KDE, and fcitx5 as the input method system. We've already got mozc for Japanese and that was infinitely less of a hassle.)
(edit for People From The Future: if you have this issue and you're on a Debian-based distro, install fcitx5-module-chttrans)
-- Frost
What's your beef with YAML?
Like I alluded to in the OP, the spaces for indentation thing!
For context, YAML literally WILL NOT LET YOU use tabs. The spaces people, not content with beating the tabs people into submission culturally, took it upon themselves to start effectively banning them at the tools level. It really worries me, not to mention being kinda offensive. There isn't even an "ease of parsing" excuse, since tabs are easier to parse than spaces (one tab = one indent level, done).
People have written YAML parsers with tabs support and got told off for it by the guy who came up with YAML. So yeah, it's very much intentional.
-- Frost
What, not even significant whitespace in general, but specifically tabs vs. spaces? I can see why one would prefer tabs, but code editors generally handle this automatically and it's definitely a good idea to pick one or the other in your language spec if you're doing significant whitespace.
Specifically tabs vs. spaces!
It is NOT a good idea to pick one or the other in your language spec. It's not up to you to force your specific coding style on others. Tabs vs. spaces is a style thing and if your language tries to decree that you aren't allowed to use your own indentation style, it's a bad language.
Just because "code editors handle it automatically" doesn't mean everyone should be forced to use spaces. (You shouldn't be forced to use tabs either, by the way. But particularly don't force the one that isn't resizable.)
-- Frost