Date: 05 May 2000 13:14:52 -0700 From: asami@FreeBSD.org (Satoshi - Ports Wraith - Asami) To: i18n@FreeBSD.org Cc: committers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Japanese support (Re: vision) Message-ID: <vqcaei43gar.fsf_-_@silvia.hip.berkeley.edu> In-Reply-To: Warner Losh's message of "Fri, 05 May 2000 11:54:11 -0600" References: <vqc66ss51ws.fsf@silvia.hip.berkeley.edu> <20000504102932.8227C37B726@hub.freebsd.org> <vqcn1m53u2s.fsf@silvia.hip.berkeley.edu> <20000505114226.V1642@argon.blackdawn.com> <20000505180526.A6360@jedi.wbnet> <20000505121044.Y1642@argon.blackdawn.com> <20000505182053.A6440@jedi.wbnet> <200005051754.LAA55462@harmony.village.org>
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(Being yanked over to -i18n -- please continue there if you are
interested.)
* From: Warner Losh <imp@village.org>
* So you use the standard qwerty keyboard? What kind of input method do
* you use under X? Can it be used in console mode?
That is actually a separate issue as far as Japanese is concerned. We
have many more keys than any keyboard so the extra keys for entering
kanji are limited to stuff like "convert" (hiragana -> kanji),
"reverse" (revert the previous conversion), etc. These are machine
dependent so can't really be used in stuff other than dedicated word
processors.
(Although I've left Japan before PCs other than the PC98 became
prevalent -- is there a standard now?)
The problem I was talking about is merely about symbols that are also
on the American QWERTY keyboard. Things like * and ` are in weird
places in "Japanese" keyboards. I guess I just need to get used to
it. (I use Dvorak anyway.)
I know people hated those in the early days of Unix. It could be
because there often were both types of keyboards in the same lab.
As for Japanese input, there are kana symbols printed on Japanese
keyboards but almost nobody uses kana input -- people seem to prefer
romaji. The normal kana keyboard ("JIS") is designed in such a bad
way (it's even worse than QWERTY for English!) that it's almost
ridiculous.
I use kana input but not the standard JIS that's on normal keyboards.
This one is called "new JIS" and although it's *a* standard, I've
never seen any keyboard with these keys printed. They at least made a
better standard but nobody actually used it it seems.
* The multibyte output stuff is relatively easy. I run kterm + mule +
* canna + wnn4 (would run wnn6 if I could buy it in the states) and can
* comminicate, to the limits of my ability, with Japanese users in
* Japanese on FreeBSD. Of course it doesn't bother me when I get
* English error messages, and it does bother me a little when I get
* Japanese error messages from Japanese software. If my skill with
* Japanese was better, even that wouldn't bother me :-).
I have an .el file that handles the new-JIS inputs for me. Netscape
and friends tend to die when I use kinput2 so I do all my Japanese
editing in emacs.
Actually I wasn't talking about keyboards (which we already *do* have
support for -- see /usr/share/syscons/keymaps) or error messages when
I brought up i18n. It's about -lxpg4 and the incomplete Japanese
support we have in /usr/share/locale. I know there are efforts trying
to improve them and I wish I could help more.
Satoshi
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