Further Adventures with a Japanese Keyboard
Well, after switching Windows 2k’s default language back to English so I can read the IME’s menus easier, and further messing around with the keyboard, I’ve discovered how to directly type hiragana with that new keyboard, I had to engage in the IME what I believe is called “kana lock,” which you can enable with CTRL+Caps Lock, or by clicking on the little “KANA” button in the IME toolbar.
The button that has the words katakana, hiragana, and roomaji written on it can be used to quickly switch between hiragana and katakana, pressing it will put you in hiragana mode (of course, if you are already in hiragana mode, it does nothing), pressing while holding down SHIFT will put you into katakana mode. If you hold down ALT while pressing it, it will toggle the “kana lock,” just like CTRL+Caps Lock. However, unlike CTRL+Caps Lock, it won’t toggle kana lock while you are in what’s called “direct input” mode, which is toggled by the key to the right of the number “1″ key (the key that has ` and ~ on a standard US QWERTY layout keyboard).
This “direct input” mode seems to be pretty much as the name implies, it just passes the text through with no intervention by the IME, which in most cases just means that the english letters and symbols will be typed. However, if kana lock is enabled while in direct input mode, you’ll end up directly typing half-width katakana.
The two keys on either side of the space bar are also quick shortcuts for the IME. The one on the left allows you to quickly switch the current set of kana between hiragana, and full and half-width katakana. The one on the right allows you to quickly cycle through the list of replacement suggestions from the IME. This function is usually (and can still be) done by the space bar, however, while in direct input mode, the space bar just acts as a space bar, even with kana lock on. That key on the right will switch you back from direct input mode, and if you have some kana (or even roomaji) selected, will also pop up the substitution selection box. For selected roomaji, it’ll just pop up selections for normal ASCII or half-or full width roomaji as multi-byte characters, etc.
Of course, these are my assumptions from my observations and experimentation with this new keyboard, some of them could be wrong or incomplete, but I’ll probably post more later if I find some new quirks or features of this keyboard. ^_^
Until next time…
– Tasunke
