REALLY fed up with the language bar!!

[WalterWills]

Has this thing got a mind of its own?!?

If it hasn't completely disappeared, some of the buttons have gone. Like the one I need to change between hiragana and direct input.

I don't know any other way to get it back other than restarting my computer!

[Jason]

The keyboard shortcut for toggling between direct input and hiragana is Alt+` (that's the apostrophe up next to the number 1 on US keyboards). At least that can save you from having to chase that button down.

[WalterWills]

I must have a British keyboard then..Above "1" I have an exclamation mark. I've tried pressing Alt+ ' but nothing happens.

At the moment, my language bar looks like this:

...when normally it has a few extra buttons, i.e. the hiragana button. It's annoying because I was in the middle of writing a message, and it decides to leave!


EDIT: It's back now....no idea what I did to make it come back though

[Jason]

Sorry. I should have said to the left of 1. It's the key with both ` (apostrophe) and ~ (tilde) on it.

If you right click on the language bar and choose the option that says something like "reposition the langauge bar", it should show the entire bar. The downside to this is that in XP you have do that every time the bar disappears and you need it. That's one thing Vista got right.

[WalterWills]

OK, I'll remember that. Thanks very much for your help.

[jkid]

Same thing happens to me all the time. It randomly returns when it wants to.

[jkid]

This is so annoying. It is happening to me right now. Same language bar as show in the picture above. I really need this fixed. Any ideas??

Edit: I restarted and "thought" I got it all working again. Then when I have hiragana selected it types random stuff e.g. if I press 'h" it writes "no". I am really, really frustrated right now. I have work due and this is not the best time for this to happen, again.

Edit 2: Fixed weird hirigana by switching the input to romaji in the settings for Microsoft IME. I really do want to know how to fix the core problem for the future though.

[Psy]

Oh man, I hate the language bar. One of the joys of being on OSX is not having to deal with it... anyway, what I tend to do in that situation is click and drag the little bar on the left side outward to increase the size of the language bar. If that doesn't work, I float the thing, switch into English, and then back into Japanese. The thing is fussy and I really wish they'd do something to streamline its interface.

Your pain is well understood, sir.