Japanese input system

Introduction
The most significant change in JWM from previous versions is the completely redesigned Japanese input system. This input system now provides one of the fastest, most streamlined, flexible and easy-to-use character entry systems ever developed, and contains a number of features never before seen, such as color coding of characters and the display of the English meaning of Kanji to assist with correct character selection. Of course, users can still modify and build their own custom Kana-to-Kanji conversion dictionaries as needed.
  English input
The Input dialog is displayed whenever Japanese character entry is possible in a target window (eg. when a wordprocessor document is open), and disappears automatically when normal English and extended European characters are expected. To enter normal English characters, simply type on the keyboard as usual. To enter extended European characters, press the Euro button (shown in Figure 1).

Figure 1
The Euro button

Pressing the Euro button will bring up a table which shows all the characters which can be entered into any of the English textboxes. This table is shown in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2
The extended European character table
Japanese input
The Input dialog contains three main sections:


Direct input mode
The buttons on the top left of the Input dialog (shown in Figure 3) support the direct input of Hiragana, Katakana, wide-roman and narrow-roman characters respectively. When any of these buttons are selected, you can type on the keyboard and your keystrokes are converted dynamically into their respective characters.

Figure 3
The Input dialog
When Hiragana and Katakana modes are selected, it usually requires multiple keystrokes to enter a single Kana character, and keystroke combinations for the Hiragana and Katakana character sets are identical. The keystroke conversion table is shown below.

Figure 4
Keystroke conversion table

When the wide-roman input mode is selected, the wide-roman alphabet can be entered directly, as well as wide-roman numbers.

If you select direct Hiragana or Katakana input and then hold the shiftkey down when you enter the first keystroke of the Kana, the Input dialog will automatically change to Kanji input mode and begin building a Kanji reading from your input. When you have entered the full reading of the Kanji (and any other search criteria), hit the spacebar and the Kanji matching these criteria will be displayed. Clicking a Kanji will input the Kanji, and the Input dialog will revert to direct Hiragana or Katakana input mode again. This makes character entry of Kana and Kanji very fast and efficient.

Table input mode
Selecting any of the buttons along the bottom of the Input dialog will bring up the respective table of that button. Thus, the full set of Hiragana, Katakana, wide-roman, English, extended European characters, Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet, Greek alphabet, Line drawing characters and special Kana characters are available. To enter any character in a table, simply click it. An example input table is shown below in Figure 5.

Figure 5
The special Kana input table
The types of characters that can be entered varies between the wordprocessor and dictionary dialogs (eg. the Find word, Edit word and New word dialogs). The wordprocessor can accept any type of character that the input system can generate, whilst the dictionary dialogs can only accept a subset of the characters. Thus, when entering characters in the dictionary dialogs, you will find that there are fewer characters to choose from in the tables (eg. some tables, such as the Cyrillic alphabet table, contain no characters compatible to the dictionary dialogs).

When you are looking up Kana or Kanji information (this is selectable from the Special menu), you will see all the characters shown in the tables, but characters which can be entered into the dictionary dialogs will be shown in green. Others will be shown in black.

Kanji input mode
Entering Kanji in JWM is now extremely flexible. To change the Input dialog into Kanji input mode, click the Kanji button on the left of the input textbox. The button next to it is the Radical selection button, and it will bring up a table of radicals you can select from.

You can enter any combination of Kanji properties into the input system and it will automatically filter out all Kanji which don't match your criteria when you press the spacebar to trigger a conversion. It doesn't matter which textbox the cursor is in when you press the spacebar to trigger a lookup. You can also combine multiple radicals to find Kanji, and use any reading of the Kanji you are looking for.

An example of searching for Kanji by multiple criteria is shown below in Figure 6. Here, a reading of "‚µ" is required, combined with a vertical bar radical and 10 character strokes. Note also that the English meaning of each Kanji is shown beside the Kanji, so you can make sure you select the right one, even if some of the Kanji are very similar. The speedkey which matches each of the Kanji in the list is also shown on the left side. Pressing the speedkey is the same as clicking the Kanji, or using the arrow keys and then pressing Return when the correct Kanji is highlighted.

Figure 6
Finding Kanji by multiple criteria
If you have a long list of matching Kanji, you can scroll up and down a page at a time by holding down the shiftkey when using the arrow keys. If you press and hold an arrow key, the list will automatically scroll in the direction selected.

To move between input modes easily, hold down the Command key (Left-Alt on the PC) and any number from 1 to 6 - the mode selected by each number is shown in the Windows menu.


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