Quote:
Originally Posted by Kumabjorn
The most common mode for Japanese input is a modified T9 system. It comes from the old regular cell phones. If you push 1 that button will contain the five first characters in the first Hiragana column あいうえお just pushing it brings up あ pushing and twisting to the right gives you い pushing down renders う to the left え and up お.
So by moving around the key in clockwise fashion you get five characters. If for example you have entered こうむ you will be faced with a selection of 公務, 工務, 校務 and 公務員 or 校務員, hence input from the keyboard is fairly fast. However, in order to sell cell phones to older Japanese (they never bought the key based ones) they have introduced hand writing recognition. The older generation prefer clam shell construction, the lower part containing a keypad for phone dialing and an input screen where you can write with your finger, one character at a time.
Newer models allow you turn the phone and write on the screen in "landscape" mode, some have introduced a stylus so you can write whole sentences. High end models come with a dedicated gaphic input chip that only deals with hand writing recognition. The older generation were educated in a strict school system and had to learn each Kanji by rote so the hand writing recognition system utilizes that rote knowledge. Use the wrong stroke order and you can get some hilarious results.
|
Being a foreign devil, handwriting input is not for me. I always remember how a word sounds and "roughly" how it looks like. So when I enter the sound and then get a list of characters to pick from it is much easier. Those systems which also give you a list of probable "followup" characters are even quicker. Just a few keyboard strokes and the whole sentence is finished.