[kde-linux] What's "skim"?

[Thierry de Coulon]

There are some wonderful people on earth that make it possible to explain 
something so as to make sure no one understands.

I've recently noticed that when I looked for kicker applets there was a "skim" 
applet proposed for installation. I wondered what it was. So  I googled a 
little and found that extraordinary piece of information:

Description:
skim is an input method platform based upon scim-lib under *NIX systems 
(including GNU/Linux and FreeBSD) systems optimized for KDE. It provides a 
GUI panel (named scim-panel-kde), a KConfig config module and SetupUIs for 
itself and scim-lib. It also has its own plugin systems which support 
on-demand loadable actions.

When you've read this, you know *nothing* more about that stuff. Better even, 
I googled for "scim" and found just the same sort of useless definition.

So: could anyone tell me where I can find an explanation as to what the hell 
this scim/skim is supposed to be used for? What's an "input method"?

Thierry