What kanji word processor are you using?

[Drusy]

Other than Word, what other kanji word processors are popular/good? I'm using a PC, so I've found JWPce to be excellent and compact too (no software bloat like Word), but I'm curious what everyone is using

[Bueller_007]

Other than Word, what other kanji word processors are popular/good? I'm using a PC, so I've found JWPce to be excellent and compact too (no software bloat like Word), but I'm curious what everyone is using

Japanese people generally stick with Word. Ichitarou (一太郎) by JustSystems is also a popular choice, although I've never used it myself.

[dizzygfunk]

I could never figure out how to make MS Word type out in Kanji and Hiragana/Katakana. I would appreciate any help with that.

[Bueller_007]

I could never figure out how to make MS Word type out in Kanji and Hiragana/Katakana. I would appreciate any help with that.

Never had any problems with that...

Just put your computer in Japanese input mode and input some Japanese.

That should do it.

[dizzygfunk]

I thought I did that. I went into the Control Panel and went into the Regional and Language Options; switched the default input language to Japanese, but it still types out in English. I don't know why this is

[Jason]

dizzygfunk, have a look at this thread: http://www.japanesepod101.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9

[stonemirror]

Yeah, that's about what I wound up figuring out when I got it working on my Tablet PC a couple of months ago. The tablet ahs a neat feature where you can draw the kanji i a pad on the screen using the stylus, and it does a pretty decent job of recognizing it (more impressive given my poor calligraphy)...

Japanese support on Mac OS X is very excellent, also. The Kotoeiri input method is really easy to use (most of the time, anyway).

As far as a word processor goes, I just use MS Word...

What I really want is some better Japanese fonts.

[Belton]

I don't even use Word or anything similar to write in English. BBEdit is my tool of choice. Most of my writing seems to be for emails or online use and is fairly short; who needs to deal with the bloat of Word when you just want to type some paragraphs?

If I do feel I need things like furigana or top to bottom left to right formatting I use LightWay Text. This is a small word processor that reminds me of MacWrite II, but as it is written by a Japanese developer it has Japanese features. And if you want you can run it in Japanese. It actually works a bit better in the Japanese version.
And I got a nice thank you from Itoh Yumiko-san when I registered. (Bill Gates doesn't send me email, but then I don't have any MS products anymore).

Another useful feature is a template for Japanese squared manuscript paper that I can print out to practice handwriting.

It runs on Windows and Mac.

The only minus is that the English version doesn't handle file naming in Japanese and you get mojibake.


Mail on the Mac always gave me problems with encoding, as 2002-JP seemed to be the better choice rather than UTF if I wanted it to be easily read. So I went for the simpler, but better for me, GyazMail. Again a Japanese developer so maybe that's why it did what I wanted. (I tried every mail program I could find before opting for GyazMail. )


LightWay Text (Japanese)
http://homepage1.nifty.com/lightway/

LightWay Text (English, French, Italian)
http://members.aol.com/LightWayText/

Gyazmail
http://www.gyazsquare.com/

What I really want is some better Japanese fonts.

Expensive when you consider the amount of work involved to make a full font. I think maybe there is a little less room for weird fonts as the kanji quickly become unintelligible.

Have you found Maniackers? Mostly kana fonts unfortunatly mapped to keyboard so kotoeri doesn't work with them.
http://www2.wind.ne.jp/maniackers/designfont.html

Mikachan. A complete handwritten font
http://www001.upp.so-net.ne.jp/mikachan/

Kouzan mountain font.
Not 100% sure of the terms of use with this font. It's in Japanese, but from what I can make out its free 無料 and presented to the public 公開.
http://musashi.or.tv/aoyagikouzanfont.htm

And a large listing in Japanese of free fonts, mainly for PC and many seem to be partial sets.
http://www.akibatec.net/freefont/

And commercial fonts listings and a good free font listing.
http://ohkadesign.cool.ne.jp/wabunfont/index.html

[Bueller_007]

I don't even use Word or anything similar to write in English. BBEdit is my tool of choice.

If you're a Mac user, you should try TextMate. IMO, it's much better than BBEdit, especially if you do any programming, because it's like an intuitive version of emacs. Unfortunately, Japanese text isn't supported properly yet, as double-width fonts haven't been implemented. BBEdit is too ugly...

Mail on the Mac always gave me problems with encoding, as 2002-JP seemed to be the better choice rather than UTF if I wanted it to be easily read.

I used to have this too. This fixed it:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301986

[Elfunko]

MsWord is the easiest thing I have found (after you install east asian language support).

But JWPce is an excellent Japanese>English dictionary with lots of entries you'd never see even in a japanese made electronic dictionary.

[roquesdoodle]

Several months ago, I followed the support link that Jason mentioned above. Although I'm not sure, I think setting up your computer to type kana makes it work for any and all word processors, regardless of the specific program. I use Open Office as well as gmail in a Firefox browser and it works just fine. Therefore I don't see why it wouldn't work with something simple and less clunky like Notepad (although I have not tried it myself). I may be wrong but I'm sure the more tech-savvy among us will be able to clarify.

[Jason]

It does indeed work in Notepad and pretty much anywhere you can input text. You may have to check the option "Extend support of advanced text services to all programs" in Regional and Language options. To get there, open up Regional & Language Options from the Control Panel, click on the Languages tab, click the Details button, then the Advanced tab.

[animate]

It's Open Office for me, all the way, though NJSTAR is more compact and if kept up to date is pretty good. Open Office makes the kanji clearer for me though, especially on Linux.

If you're looking for a good dictionary/word processory, then try Jquicktrans and it's accompanying much needed plug-ins.