[cxterm-devel] Re: Japanese mapping files in the cxterm

[Hin-Tak L. <hin...@ya...>]

If you could kindly point out where the errors are, we can correct them.

The cit files are compiled from the tit files (which are basically
two-column tables with a small header of about 30 lines). Slightly off-topic,
I have already recently located the original authors and asked for their
permission to become official and other issues; but haven't heard from them yet.

Indeed, Kya, etc are somewhat like dipthoughs(spelling?) in English.
A friend of mine (English, but married a Japanese lady) did mention
something about that when I introduce him to cxterm a very long time ago.

AFAIIK, the Japanese parts are just there for "completeness" (and so is
the Korean part) and had not been shown much interest by the native speakers.
The Japanese have much more intuitive (to them) ways of inputting
characters than the primitive ones available within cxterm. The have complete
libraries (Wnn, Canna are some of the better known ones, which are shipped
with Redhat), and their own input mechanisms (called Kinput, I seems to
recall, which has nothing to do with KDE) which are quite a lot more advanced.
The native Japanese speakers do their typing rather differently than
how cxterm does Japanese - a close friend of mine (Japanese) run the
Japanese version of MacOS and the way he types is quite different,
and much easier to him.

I have a very elementary understanding of Japanese (and I can always ask some
Japanese friends if in doubt), so if you could tell me what you think
they the corrections are, we'll consider putting it in.

The tit files are in the source bundle, so if you can edit them and send
over your modified version we'll discuss this further.

(I am somewhat in the same boat... been using cxterm since about 1993/1994
and thought I might as well keep it going for my own benefit...)

In fact I do have two private dictionaries which I haven't included in
the source - one is basically your idea of hirahana+katakana, plus
all JIS level 1 kanji's in their Kan? readings in one mapping (I later
realize On? reading is probably more useful as that's how Japanese
people pronounce the kanji's); the other's ChangJie (the fastest Chinese
input method) converted to do japanese Kanji input. They are both
somewhat strange, and not to everybody's taste, but that's the
strength of Cxterm's input system - it is extendable.

Ziying Sherwin wrote:
> 
> 
> I have been using cxterm on the Unix platform for a while. And I am glad to 
> see somebody finally volunteering the maintainance work.
> 
> Recently, we noticed an error on the Japanese input mapping in files
> HIRAGANA.cit, KATAKANA.cit and ROMKANA.cit. According to the documentation
> coming with the cxterm application, the double-character entries they have
> (like for "kya", "shu" in HIRAGANA.utf) should be multiple-choice mappings.
> But from my limited Japanese knowledge, they should be a two-character
> mappings and not choices. The first character is in normal size and the
> second one in a smaller size located in the left bottom.
> 
> I just wonder whether my guess is valid. Do you happen to know where the 
> Japanese keyboard mapping files come from and whether they have been used by 
> native Japanese-speakers?
> 
> Thanks. Ziying
> 
>