The input method editor (IME) is indispensable for Citrix customers who want to type in their own language, especially when the input language is Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. The IME user experience can have a real impact on productivity, so that’s why the Citrix team works hard to ensure it’s smooth and accurate for our users.

Recently we’ve implemented the Generic Client IME feature in Citrix Workspace app for HTML5 to improve the user experience.  With this update, most of the input issues from Chinese, Japanese and Korean have been resolved. At the same time, we’ve enhanced the UI in Citrix Workspace app for HTML5 to align with the experience of a local IME. In this blog post, we’ll look at these updates and how they benefit users.

Generic Client IME Feature

For the new Generic Client IME that’s built into Citrix Workspace app for HTML5 version 2105.5 and later, we have implemented a new virtual channel in the ICA session called CTXIME. A series of new data commands are defined to process the IME-related events generated by the browser in response to a user typing. Because Linux VDA has implemented the CTXIME channel accordingly, nearly all the IME behaviors can be properly handled. Now customers get a user experience as if they were typing with the local IME from their client OS!

IME Components

An IME has two important user interfaces — the composition window and the candidate window. The composition window appears when the user enters text and, depending on the conversion mode, either displays the text as entered or displays the converted text. The candidate window appears in conjunction with the composition window and contains a list of alternative characters. The user can scroll through the candidate list and select the desired characters, then return to the composition window, and can compose the desired text this way until finalizing the composition string. The window is then closed.

As the screenshot above shows, the candidate window always follows the input cursor in the remote app. The CTXIME virtual channel ensures the cursor position is continuously synchronized from the VDA to the client during typing. The CTXIME virtual channel also guarantees input and output reliability between the client side and the VDA/server side and provides more data commands for communication with the VDA. That means more IME-related functions and user-friendly UIs (e.g. composition segment, selection underline, and font, etc.) can be implemented correctly.

In earlier implementations of the Generic Client IME in Citrix Workspace app for HTML5, the keyboard virtual channel in the ICA session handled the input for all languages. The keyboard is competent in most cases, however, when confronting the complexity of composition for IME-dependent languages (Chinese, Japanese and Korean), it was powerless. Issues like incorrect UI position, lack of support for segmented words, failing to add or remove characters in a composition may be experienced during input. The Generic Client IME mitigates all these gaps, offering the best input experience yet for Citrix customers.

To simplify the configuration, we also designed the new Generic Client IME feature to be enabled by default for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean browsers. However, to provide flexibility, we’ve also made it possible for admins to enable or disable the feature according to any browser language.

Learn More

Learn more in our product documentation or contact us via email. We have much more planned for the Generic Client IME feature so be on the lookout for new Citrix Workspace app for HTML5 releases!