Entering Text

JWPce text input is relatively simple. There are two edit modes and three input modes. Text input is based on romaji, which JWPce translates to kana and then to kanji.

  • Edit Modes
  • Input Modes
  • Switching Modes
  • ASCII Mode
  • JASCII Mode
  • Kanji Mode
  • Entering Hiragana
  • Entering Katakana
  • Using the JIS Table
  • Kana Table
  • Entering Kanji
  • Explicit Kanji Conversion
  • Inline Kanji Conversion
  • User Kana to Kanji Conversions
  • Editing and/or Adding User Conversions
  • Working with Microsoft's Global IME

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  • Edit Modes

    JWPce has two edit modes, insert and overwrite. The default edit mode is insert. In this mode characters are inserted into the text, pushing other characters to the right.

    In overwrite mode the characters you enter replace the previous characters as the cursor moves over them. When in overwrite mode the cursor becomes a fatter vertical bar to indicate the mode change.

    You can toggle between the two modes by pressing the Ins(ert) key, or by clicking on the mode indicator in the status bar.


    WARNING! When in overwrite mode characters are replaced on a character-per-character basis. Thus entering kyo () will replace two characters.


    Input Modes

    JWPce has three input modes. These are Kanji, ASCII, and JASCII.


    Switching Modes

    There are a number of ways to switch the input modes. You can click on one of the mode buttons on the toolbar to select a specific mode. You can click on the mode indicator on the status bar. This will cycle through the possible input modes. In addition, all dialog boxes containing a Japanese edit control have a button that will also cycle through the input modes.

    The input mode can also be changed using the mode commands located in the popup menu (Kanji, Ascii, or Jascii), or the mode commands located in the Edit/Mode sub-menu*. In both of these menus, a checkmark is located next to one of the modes to indicate the current input mode.

    Finally, there are a number of keyboard commands that determine the input mode:

    keyaction
    Ctrl+Aselect ASCII input mode
    Ctrl+Jselect JASCII input mode
    Ctrl+Kselect Kanji input mode
    Ctrl+^
    F4
    toggles between Kanji and ASCII modes

    WARNING! The keyboard commands to change the input mode will only function if the main edit window or a Japanese edit control is active.

    * The Edit/Mode sub-menu does not exist in Windows CE versions to keep the menu length less than the screen size. The mode selection commands, however, are still in the popup menu.


    ASCII Mode

    In ASCII mode JWPce simply enters text as a normal English word processor, such as Notepad, or Word.


    JASCII Mode

    JASCII mode text is very similar to ASCII mode, except the characters used to display the English text are based on Japanese font spacing. This means that each character occupies the same space as a Japanese character. Additionally, when printing vertically JASCII characters rotate along with the Japanese characters. ASCII characters, however, do not rotate and thus will be sideways when printed vertically.


    Kanji Mode

    Kanji mode is the default input mode for JWPce. In this mode you enter romaji and your input is translated into Japanese characters. The next sections describe how to work in Kanji mode in detail.


    Entering Hiragana

    When entering hiragana, you type the romaji for what you want to enter and JWPce converts it to hiragana. For example to enter the Japanese equivalent of "I am studying Japanese" you would enter

    When you are done, JWPce would display:

    As you type the characters, you will notice the characters you type appearing on the left side of the status bar. When you have entered enough characters to unambiguously specify a hiragana character that character appears in the text and the status bar is cleared. For example when entering the character , you press m, and a m appears on the status bar, when you press the I, the is entered into the text and the status bar is cleared. Similarly when entering , first k then ky are shown on the status bar, when then o is entered the is placed in the text and the status bar is cleared.

    If you wish to change what you are entering you can press Del or BackSpace and the status bar will be cleared. Further, if you type an invalid romaji combination, JWPce will abort the conversion and start over. For example if you type mki, JWPce will actually generate the character . When you press the k, the combination mk is not a valid romaji combination and JWPce starts the conversion over with the k. JWPce has full support for the Hepburn, Kunrei, and Nippon romanization systems*, as well as most variations of these systems. As many of the odd combinations (multi-character sequences) that are used in writing katakana words, as are reasonable and possible have also been included. Katakana combinations have been excluded when they conflict with normal kana patterns in one or more of the standard romanization systems, or when they would make typing normal text difficult. In all cases, you can generate such combinations by using the + character to enter small kana.

    The n ()

    JWPce converts the characters you type to hiragana as long as the conversion is not ambiguous. The main ambiguity is from the n character. When you enter n, JWPce has to wait for the next character to determine how to convert it to kana. Until you type the next character JWPce cannot determine if you want to enter just or something like . If the next character is aiueo, JWPce will generate the hiragana . If the next character is anything else, JWPce will generate a and start a new conversion.

    An additional problem arises when you enter combinations like na (or ni, nu, ne, no). In these cases, JWPce cannot tell for example if you want or . JWPce will always generate the latter (e.g. ). Thus if you want , you need to tell JWPce by entering n'a. (This notation is used in most romaji dictionaries to deal with the same ambiguity.)

    JWPce also allows you to use the combination n" to generate a . This particular combination can be very useful when using the CapsLock to enter long katakana passages.

    Combinations such as mb and mp will also generate a . This type of combination is common in words such as shimbun ().

    Small kana and the small-tsu ()

    Small kana can be generated for many of the kana by preceding the romaji by a + character. See the kana table for a full list of characters.

    The small-tsu () can be generated in one of two ways. You can either explicitly generate a small tsu by entering +tsu, or whenever you enter the same consonant twice, JWPce will generate a small tsu, except for the case of nn, which will never generate a small tsu. For example the input kaette generates the hiragana . JWPce will also generate a when a t is followed by a c as in the case of matcha ().

    Particles and Other difficult kana

    The particles , , and have to be treated with some care. Even though the first two are pronounced wa and e you must enter ha and he to generate the characters. Enter wo to generate .

    There are two other kana that tend to cause trouble. The characters and have the same romaji (zu). If you enter zu, JWPce will produce a . To generate the character enter du.

    Similarly the characters and have the same romaji (ji). If you enter ji, you will get . Enter di to get .

    Some special characters can be entered using ^ codes. These characters are:

    keyboard inputcharacter
    ^^
    ^.
    ^-
    ^+

    * NTC's New Japanese-English Character Dictionary, edited by Jack Halpern, NTC Publishing Group, 1997, appendix 4, page 1747.


    Entering Katakana

    Entering katakana is identical to entering hiragana except that you enter the romaji in upper case. Thus if you entered hitobito you would get , but if you entered HITOBITO you would get .


    Tip: The Caps Lock is really useful when you need to type a lot of katakana.


    Using the JIS Table

    The JIS table can be used to enter kana (or other characters for which you cannot remember the romaji). The JIS Table is covered more fully later. The JIS table can be accessed from the Kanji/JIS Table menu command, or the JIS Table on the popup-menu, or Ctrl+T.

    By default the JIS table opens to the hiragana page, showing all possible hiragana. The page below the hiragana page (page-down) contains all the katakana. Pages above the hiragana page contain punctuation, symbols, and other similar characters.

    You can simply select a character from the JIS table and double click on the character to have it inserted into the text, or select the Insert to File button.


    Kana Table

    This section contains a table showing the basic romaji->kana conversions supported by JWPce. You can also use the Character Information dialog box to determine the romaji required to obtain a particular kana.


    Entering Kanji

    In reality, the version of "I am studying Japanese" we have been working with

    really looks funny (and is very hard to read). We will now look at how to make this sentence look like

    The major difference here is that the second form has kanji.


    Explicit Kanji Conversion

    You can explicitly convert kana to kanji by highlighting the text and executing a kanji conversion. The selected text should be all hiragana.

    An explicit kanji conversion can be initiated via the Kanji/Convert menu command, choosing the kanji convert button on the toolbar, by selecting Convert from the popup menu (right click while over the selected text), or via any of the following key commands; F2, F3, Ctrl+>, Ctrl+<, Ctrl+Up, or Ctrl+Down. (On Windows CE PPC machines, the rocker-switch may be used to generate a kanji conversion, and/or select kanji from the kanji list.)

    When you start a kanji conversion two things can happen. If JWPce cannot find a kanji string that corresponds to the selected text you will hear a beep. In this case you should try selecting part of the text and attempting another conversion.

    In the other case JWPce could find any number of kanji that are valid representations of the text you have selected. In this case the kanji bar (below) will display all possible kanji representations of the kana. The kanji displayed on the kanji bar are presented in the order of frequency of usage, so the most common kanji used to represent a particular kana are presented first. The last entry in the kanji bar will be the hiragana text that you selected. One of the kanji representations will be selected by JWPce and inserted into your text.

    You may now use the mouse or keyboard to select the specific kanji that you want inserted into your document. A particular kanji representation can be selected directly with the mouse, or you can use the following keys to move through the possible kanji conversions:

    keyaction
    F2, Ctrl+>, Ctrl+Up, (rocker-up)next selection to the right
    F3, Ctrl+<, Ctrl+Down, (rocker-down)previous selection to the left

    If you move the selected conversion off the right or left end of the list of possible conversions, it will wrap back to the other end.

    As an example of conversions, if you enter the text , JWPce will suggest the following possible kanji conversions:

    The first three entries mean "weekly", "customs", and "published weekly"; last is the hiragana entered. Generally, conversions are presented such that the most common conversions are presented first (on the left).


    Tip: If you want to check the meaning of the kanji on the kanji bar, right clicking (Alt+left click) on a character will get
    Character Information for the selected character. This can be used to determine the correct kana->kanji conversion when you are not sure.

    Initially JWPce simply proposes the first selection in the list as the suggested conversion (the most common one). When you select a particular kana->kanji conversion, however, JWPce remembers your choice and next time you enter the same kana, JWPce will suggest the conversion you previously selected.


    Tip: If you regularly use a kana->kanji conversion that is not contained in JWPce you can add a user conversion to the list of possible conversions.


    Inline Kanji Conversion

    The above method (first typing the hiragana, then selecting the text, and finally converting it to kanji), works well, but is not very convenient. It would be tedious to type a reasonably sized document using just this method. To make typing and kanji conversion easier, JWPce can convert kana to kanji as you type, or inline.

    You start an inline kanji conversion by capitalizing the first character of the word. For example, if you wanted to type to study you could enter Benkyou, and JWPce would display .

    As you enter text in an inline kanji conversion, the text is highlighted, and each new hiragana you enter extends the highlighted region. When you type enough characters for the correct kanji to be determined, that kanji is automatically inserted into the text. At the same time, the kanji bar displays any other possible conversions, and the raw hiragana. As long as the kanji bar displays the kana, you can still use the mouse or keyboard shortcuts (see above) to change the kanji translations. (The above example of Benkyou leads to only one possible kanji conversion, but other examples (such as Denki) lead to more than one possible kanji conversion.)

    When you are performing an inline kanji conversion and you want to delete the last character typed you can simply press the BackSpace key, which will delete one hiragana. If you delete the first hiragana the kanji conversion will be aborted. If you explicitly move the cursor (cursor keys or mouse), the kanji conversion will also be aborted.

    The inline conversion will not actually convert the kana to kanji until it determines that you can no longer add additional characters to the hiragana and make a valid kanji compound. This can occur in two different ways. First, as in the example above, it can occur when JWPce determines that it would not be possible to add any more hiragana to this compound. Second, when you type a character that cannot be inserted into the kanji compound; for example, if you enter Nihongo, the kanji is not converted, but if you enter Nihongowo, JWPce displays . This is because the particle cannot possible be included in the kanji compound.


    Tip: Remember that you can still change the kanji conversion as long as the kanji bar displays alternative conversions, even if you have typed other characters and the cursor is beyond the kanji.

    Sometimes you want only a short bit of a kanji compound (for example the kanji ). You cannot get just this kanji by allowing JWPce to determine the end of the conversion, because the program cannot tell that you don't want . In these cases you can force JWPce to perform the kana to kanji conversion in one of two ways. First, you can explicitly force the kanji conversion via the Kanji/Convert menu command, by selecting Convert from the popup menu (right click), or via any of the following key commands; F2, F3, Ctrl+>, Ctrl+<, Ctrl+Up, Ctrl+Down, rocker-up or rocker-down. In the above example, entering Ben**, and pressing F2 will result in the following possible conversions:


    Tip: If you want to check the meaning of the kanji on the kanji bar, right clicking (Alt+left click) on a character will get Character Information for the selected character. This can be used to determine the correct kana->kanji conversion when you are not sure.

    The other way to end a kanji conversion is simply to start another one. If you capitalize the first letter of a hiragana JWPce takes everything you have typed so far and converts it to kanji. There is a slight risk here, in that when you do this you do not get a chance to choose which kanji you get, you simply get the default kanji. But after you have been using JWPce for a while, and JWPce has remembered a number of your last kana to kanji conversions, this can be a very fast way to input many kanji.

    One of the few problems with this system relates to the characters A, I, U, E, and O. JWPce must determine if you want katakana characters (), of if you want to initiate a kana to kanji conversion. The rule JWPce uses to determine this is when an upper case character is followed by a lower case character, a kana to kanji conversion is started. If an upper case character is followed by another upper case character katakana characters are generated.

    Using this system, in order to generate kanji such as , one must enter A and then start a kana to kanji conversion explicitly (Kanji/Convert menu command, Convert from the popup menu (right click), F2, F3, Ctrl+>, Ctrl+<, Ctrl+Up, Ctrl+Down, or rocker up/down). Further, to enter a katakana one must enter something like AA, and BackSpace, or A and press a cursor key. There are a number of ways to force JWPce to output the katakana character, these are simply some examples of common ways.


    Tip: When entering some kanji with very common kana it is sometimes easier to enter a kanji compound containing the kanji and delete the unwanted part of the compound. For example if you just wanted the kanji , and entered the text Kyou and pressed F2 you would get a list of 44 possibilities. Thus entering Benkyou and then deleting the kanji can be faster.

    * The Conv Choices control on the Advanced page of the Options dialog box (Ctrl+O or Utilities/Options) determines the number of kana->kanji conversions that JWPce remembers.

    ** If you actually do this example, you will notice that the character does not show up in the edit window until you press F2; this is because JWPce needs to see if you want to type ni, or nya, etc.


    User Kana to Kanji Conversions

    The kana to kanji conversion dictionary used by JWPce contains most common conversions. However, it is not possible for the dictionary to contain all possible conversions (particularly with verb endings, there are simply too many possibilities). To remedy this problem JWPce allows you to define your own kana to kanji conversions.

    You access the user conversions via the Utilities/User Conversion... menu command or selecting User Convert from the toolbar. This will open a dialog box containing an edit-list control. If there are entries in the list, they may look something like:

    This line can be read as "the kana can be replaced by the kanji ". Since this is a noun, this is a very simple conversion.

    The conversion line for a ichidan doushi (ru) verb might look something like:

    This line can be read as "the kana can be replaced by a kanji " (this is actually from the verb , to investigate). There are some things to notice about this entry. First, the verb ending is not included. This is to allow matching of different possible endings for the verb (, , etc.). If the ending were included, it would only match the dictionary form of the verb.

    Second, the kana is included in the definition. This is because if it were not included, the kana would match the kanji . In this case, whenever you tried to convert the kana , JWPce would suggest the kanji , but if the is not followed by , this would not be a valid conversion.

    You can also tell JWPce that a particular kanji conversion is specifically an ichidan doushi (ru) verb, then the conversion line would look like this:

    The indicates that his is an ichidan doushi (note the use of parentheses instead of the brackets use on godan doushi).

    There are a number of advantages to this type of entry for ichidan doushi than the type used above. The major advantage is that JWPce can use the specific knowledge that this is an ichidan doushi to make more intelligent decisions in suggesting kanji conversions.

    When dealing with a godan doushi (u) verb, the entry might look something like this:

    Here, the line indicates that the kana can be represented by the kanji (to work). Further, the part of the line that contains indicates what the verb ending is. This would cause JWPce to automatically generate the following conversions:

    These are of course all of the possible godan-doushi translations.

    The conversion system also supports special conversions for - adjective. Such entries appear in the conversion list as:

    This entry could have being been generated without indicating that it was an adjective, however, by indicating that this is an adjective, JWPce can make more intelligent decisions in suggesting kanji conversions.


    Editing and/or Adding User Conversions

    You can use the edit-list controls to manipulate the list of user conversions (moving things up, down, delete, add, etc.).

    You can also edit an existing entry or add a new entry. Either of these choices brings you to the User Conversion dialog box. This dialog box allows you to enter a kana string, a kanji string, and indicate if this is a godan doushi, ichidan doushi, or i-keiyoushi. JWPce requires that the kana string contains only hiragana. The kanji string can contain anything you like.

    If you check the ichidan doushi box, the kana string must end in a . If the kana and kanji strings both end in , JWPce will automatically remove the the kanji string.

    If you check the godan doushi box, the kana string must end in a valid kana for a verb (, etc.). If the kana and kanji strings end in the same kana, JWPce will automatically remove that kana from the kanji string.

    If you select the i-keiyoushi box, the kana string must end in an . If the kana and and kanji strings both end in , JWPce will automatically remove the from the kanji string.

    If you make an entry that is not a verb or adjective, you can include multiple kanji representations of the same kana string by separating them with a slash (/).


    Tip: You can use the user defined kana to kanji conversions to save typing. Since you can put anything in the kanji part of the conversion, you could even put an entire paragraph, and when you enter the kana, that paragraph would be inserted into the text.

    Importing User Conversion

    You can use the Import button (or simply drag a file onto the dialog box) to import a user conversion list. This can be used to import your friends' user conversion lists without having to reenter it, or without having to disturb your own list.


    Working with Microsoft's Global IME

    If you have Microsoft’s Global IME, you can use this as an input system for JWPce. In order to use the IME with JWPce you must have the full Global IME. The full Global IME is distributed with Japanese versions of Windows, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and some versions of Windows NT. This is not the limited IME that can be used with Internet Explorer and some Office applications.

    If you set the Global IME into Japanese mode, JWPce will automatically use the Global IME as an input system. If you set the Global IME into English mode, JWPce will automatically use its internal input system. You can freely switch back and forth using whichever system you find more convenient at the time.

    Currently JWPce functions only as a partially IME-aware application. This implies that input will be through a composition window. This will be improved in later versions when I have a system that can be used for testing and evaluation.

    For instructions on using the Global IME please consult your Microsoft documentation.

    IME Support on Windows XP and forward

    Starting with Windows XP Microsoft has changed the operation of the global IME. Before Windows XP, the IME would transmit Japanese text to any program that indicated that the IME was supported. Starting with Windows XP, the IME will transmit Japanese characters to any program, but only if Japanese is the selected non-Unicode program language. If the non-Unicode program language is set to any other language the IME will only send a string of question marks (???) to the application.

    The long term solution would be to convert JWPce to a UNICODE application; however, this will prevent the program from working on Windows 95 and Windows 98 systems.

    In the sort term, you can change the language used for non-Unicode applications to Japanese as follows:

    1. Open Control Panel.
    2. Open Regional and Language Options.
    3. Select the Advanced tab
    4. Change the Language for non-Unicode Programs to Japanese.

    This will allow the IME to send Japanese characters directly to JWPce and other non-Unicode programs. Note that changing this parameter can make slight changes in the display used for various non-Unicode programs. In general these don’t cause any problems, but you can also change it back at any time.


    Next Chapter: Basic Editing and Formatting