Intelligent Input Methods (IM) are essential for making text entries in many East Asian scripts, but their application to other languages has not been fully explored. This paper discusses how such tools can contribute to the development of computer processing of other oriental languages. We propose a design philosophy that regards IM as a text service platform, and treats the study of IM as a cross disciplinary subject from the perspectives of software engineering, human-computer interaction (HCI), and natural language processing (NLP). We discuss these three perspectives and indicate a number of possible future research directions.