baumgart@esquire.dpw.com (Steve Baumgarten) (03/27/91)
A friend is interested in getting the Kanji system for his Mac, but he was unsure about how one would enter Kanji when writing, and what word processors (and other programs) are compatible with the Kanji system. Is there a special Kanji keyboard available, or does one have to use one of the standard Apple English keyboards and make use of multiple-key combinations or a Key Caps-like DA to enter text? Any light you could shed on this, or on other topics related to the Kanji system would be appreciated. -- Steve Baumgarten | "New York... when civilization falls apart, Davis Polk & Wardwell | remember, we were way ahead of you." baumgart@esquire.dpw.com | cmcl2!esquire!baumgart | - David Letterman
ldo@waikato.ac.nz (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) (03/28/91)
I've seen one or two people using Kanji on a Mac, and I've briefly played with it myself (not that I know any Japanese!). The text input will work with an ordinary Roman-style keyboard, though I understand a Kanji keyboard is available (and no, it doesn't have 3000 keys!). With a Roman keyboard, you type in the Roman character sequence for each syllable. As soon as you press the first key, a window appears at the bottom of the screen, showing you your input. As soon as a syllable is complete, its Roman representation is replaced with the corresponding "kana" (syllabic) character. Once you've built up the kana sequence for a complete word, press the space bar, and you get a list of Kanji ideograms with the same pronunciation. You can use the arrow keys to move through the list (up/down arrow takes you to the previous/next line, if there're more possibilities than will fit in the window), and you press return when you've found the one you want. The application then receives the character codes for that Kanji character. You have lots of control over the system--you can set up custom Kanji dictionaries with specialist characters that aren't in the standard JIS character set. I think the system even "learns" which characters you use most frequently, and presents those choices first. As for compatibility with applications, in theory every Mac application is supposed to be "worldwide-software-compatible". In practice, much Mac software is written by Americans, and, well... Some of the incompatibilities that I've found: * Kanji characters are represented by two bytes, whereas most Roman systems only use one-byte characters. Sometimes string searches in word processors will end up matching half of one character, which looks strange. * Some applications don't correctly compute string widths for Kanji text. I've seen both ReadySetGo 4.5 and WriteNow 2.0 leave lots of blank space after every Kanji sequence on a line. * The user interface guidelines state that, when you choose a (possibly non-Roman) font for subsequent text input, the application should change the keyboard script accordingly. In other words, when you select a Kanji font, the keyboard input should switch to the Kanji system, and when you select a Roman font, keyboard input should switch back to Roman mode. Needless to say, lots of applications have never heard about this. But you can always switch the keyboard input script yourself, either by clicking on the script icon in the menu bar, or by pressing command-space. (No, that doesn't actually cause a conflict with HyperCard--I think command-shift-space is the sequence for hiding/showing the menubar that works with any localized system!) There are some Kanji-specific applications around--I recall seeing ads for a word processor called "EGword". Also there is a Kanji version of PageMaker. But there's very little to lose in trying whatever Roman software you've got (I had some success with old MacWrite and WordPerfect 1.0.x--haven't had a chance to try MacWrite II or WordPerfect 2.0, though), to see how well it works. By the way, the Kanji version of System 6.0.7 is out--it's on the latest "develop" CD-ROM. Lawrence D'Oliveiro fone: +64-71-562-889 Computer Services Dept fax: +64-71-384-066 University of Waikato electric mail: ldo@waikato.ac.nz Hamilton, New Zealand 37^ 47' 26" S, 175^ 19' 7" E, GMT+12:00 "Businesses cannot be expected to be competitive when they know that on Monday morning they will have to pay the cost of what happened in the rugby scrum at the weekend." -- Ruth Richardson
miyazaki@venus.NoSubdomain.NoDomain (Takeshi Miyazaki) (03/29/91)
The article of ldo@waikato.ac.nz (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) is correct, but few more comments. >With a Roman keyboard, you type in the Roman character sequence for >each syllable It is roma-ji, a standard translation from hiragana/katakana to alphabet. > Once you've built up >the kana sequence for a complete word, press the space bar, and you get a >list of Kanji ideograms with the same pronunciation. We call this software as "front end processor (FEP)". Kanji Talk has it's own FEP, but it has a rather poor performance. So people use (buy) other FTPs such as VJE, TurboJip, and EGBridge. >Some of the incompatibilities that I've found: Once someone tried to compile compatibility list on the net, but I don't remember who was. As far as I know, compatible text editors are miniWRITER, ASLEdit, Acta, Nisus(I don't have), Yoedit and McSink. Takeshi Miyazaki miyazaki@ee.princeton.edu