Content-type: text/html
phrase - Manages databases used with the phrase input method
phrase [-user class|-system class]
The
phrase
command is used with the following options
only to download phrase data to the VT382-D Traditional Chinese terminal.
For this terminal, phrase input is supported directly by hardware. See
DESCRIPTION
for more information.
Download the phrase information for the specified class from
the system phrase database to a Chinese terminal.
Download the phrase information of the given class from the
user phrase database to a Chinese terminal.
The phrase input method is supported in the Korean, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese environments. Phrase input is a shorthand input method that automatically converts a keyword into a phrase. An English text example would be to map the keyword dec to the phrase Digital Equipment Corporation. In this case, when a user enters dec in phrase input mode, Digital Equipment Corporation immediately appears on the screen.
Phrase input is supported by either hardware (specific Asian terminals) or software. For the VT382-D Traditional Chinese terminal, phrase data must be explicitly downloaded to the terminal. When entered with either the -user or -system option, the phrase command performs the download operation for this terminal.
For other Asian terminals in the VT382 family, phrase input is supported through the SIM service. For these terminals, the stty command both enables the SIM service and also specifies the set of phrase information to be used with the phrase input method. See stty(1) for more information.
For the DECwindows Motif or CDE environments, phrase input is supported through the input method server. In these graphical user interface environments, the phrase input method is enabled through the input method application. Using the SIM service with terminal emulators in these environments is not recommended because the SIM service uses the 26th line of a terminal screen. Terminal emulator windows do not contain a 26th line.
Without options, the
phrase
command invokes the utility
that manages and maintains the database that is used with the phrase input
method. By using this utility, you can add and modify phrase keywords and
the corresponding phrase strings in the database. You create keyword/phrase
mappings within the context of phrase classes, which you can also create through
the utility.
This section describes the entities that the phrase utility creates and manages and the locations of phrase databases on the system.
A phrase, or phrase definition, is a combination of graphic characters in the range of hexadecimal values 0x20-0x7e and 0xa1-0xfe. The length of a phrase definition can range from 1 to 80 bytes.
Each phrase is associated with a keyword, or phrase name, which is a string of English alphanumeric characters. The length of a phrase name is limited to 8 or fewer bytes.
A class is a group of related phrases. Each class is identified by a class name. This name must be unique, must contain only ASCII printable characters, and is limited to a length of 8 or fewer bytes.
Regardless of whether phrase input is being supported by hardware or software, recognition of phrase names and conversion of phrase names to phrases is done only within the context of a particular phrase class. Therefore, phrases are always added, deleted, or modified in a class-specific operation.
There are two kinds of phrase databases: systemwide and user specific. There is only one systemwide phrase database and this is created and maintained by the system manager when logged in as root. Non-privileged users have only read access to the systemwide phrase database. On the other hand, each user can create and maintain a personal phrase database. A user can access another user's personal phrase database only by using a copy operation (assuming file protections allow this). In other words, a user cannot directly use the phrase input method with the private phrase database of another user.
A system or user phrase database is actually a set of locale-specific databases. Phrase data files for different locales reside in different subdirectories of the same base directory. (The base directory depends on whether the phrase database is systemwide or user specific.) In each locale subdirectory, two files, phrase.dat and class.dat, contain the phrase database information for that locale.
The base directory locations of the system and user phrase databases
are determined by the
sim
service entry in the
/var/i18n/conf/cp_dirs
file. This is true even when the phrase
input method is not being supported by the SIM service. See
cp_dirs(4)
for more details about this file.
When the phrase utility is invoked without any options, it enters into a menu-driven mode. In this mode, you select the appropriate menu option to make the utility perform a particular function.
The main menus appear on a horizontal bar at the top of the screen. Selecting some items on a menu may display a submenu from which you then select a function. In the upper right corner of the screen is the name of the current database, which can be USER or SYSTEM, and the name of the current phrase class.
When a menu option is highlighted, it can be selected by pressing the Return key or the space bar. If the highlighted option is not the one you want, you can highlight another option (if any) by pressing the arrow key or a hot key. The hot key is shown within parenthesis () or as an underlined letter. You can return from the current set of menu options to the previous menu or exit the utility altogether by pressing Ctrl/X.
The following list summarizes the options on each main menu. Options followed by an asterisk (*) produce submenus in which you choose either the system or user database.
FILE Copy from Database (*) Load to Terminal (*) Exit
CLASS Create a class (*) View phrase in a class (*) Rename a class (*) Delete a class (*) Select current class (*)
PHRASE Create phrase Modify phrase Delete phrase
LANGUAGE
Local language
English
When invoked without options, the phrase command runs the phrase utility rather than attempting to download data to a VT382-D terminal. The phrase utility automatically accesses the appropriate default database (systemwide for the root account and user for non-privileged users). If this database does not exist, the utility will create the database from data entered during the utility session.
Before invoking the utility, make sure that your locale setting is the correct one for the phrases that you plan to enter. Refer to Chinese(5) and Korean(5) for names of appropriate locales. Refer to locale(1) for information about setting locale.
When using the phrase utility, you must first set the class name. By default, the class name is set to DEFAULT. However, you can choose a different class name by selecting the ``Select current class'' item of the Class Maintenance menu.
The phrase utility supports a number of housekeeping functions. For the following descriptions, remember that database ownership is determined by user identity; only the root account owns the system database. You can create a phrase database entry by specifying a phrase name and a corresponding phrase definition. The phrase entry is created in the database that you own and in the database subdirectory determined by the current locale setting. The phrase belongs to the class that is currently set.
The following information applies to Chinese terminals that use the SIM service for phrase input support.
For most users, when the phrase utility is used to update the phrase database, the appropriate simd daemon is notified of the database update. However, this notification mechanism does not work in a distributed environment. In other words, when the updated phrase database on a remote system is mounted on the local system through NFS, the daemon on the local system is not notified of the update.
To work around this problem, the local user can enter the following command to stop and restart the simd daemon so that it can access the changed remote database:
% stty -sim % stty sim
In order for these commands to work, no other users on the local system
can be using the SIM service to access the remote phrase database when the
commands are entered.
Commands: locale(1), stty(1), simd(8)
Others: Chinese(5), Korean(5), sim(5)