Re: How do you write input methods?

[Stephen Berman]

On Mon, 30 Aug 2021 13:24:07 +0200 Joost Kremers <joostkremers@fastmail.fm> 
wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 30 2021, Stephen Berman wrote:
>> And you need
>> to use register-input-method to enable invoking the input method via
>> `C-\'; examples are in the lisp/leim/leim-list.el file.
>
> That's interesting... I define a couple of personal input methods in my init
> files and they do show up when I do `M-x set-input-method`, even though I 
> don't
> use `register-input-method`.
>
> Hmm, looking at the doc string of `register-input-method`, I see the following
> comment:
>
> "
> The commands ‘describe-input-method’ and ‘list-input-methods’ need
> these duplicated values to show some information about input methods
> **without loading the relevant Quail packages.** (emphasis mine)
> "
>
> Does that mean that `register-input-method` is basically just a way to tell
> Emacs about available input methods without loading them? And since my input
> methods get loaded during startup, there's no need to register them anymore?

I thought I had found it was necessary to use register-input-method but
I just tested omitting that and it seems you're right.  Either I
misremembered or misunderstood.  I guess that's an argument for
documenting how to write input methods ;-)

Steve Berman