Okay, I hope this topic fits here. This question might seem a little silly for some, but please bear with me as I am a total newbie when it comes to all things technical.
I am currently doing a sentence based method of learning Japanese (my own little method, somehow..) and thus make heavy use of the IME input system. However, I find it quite a chore having to switch to Hiragana input manually for each and every application (Firefox, Anki [which tends to crash quite often for me], Text to Speech program, ICQ,...) as the default input method seems to be Romaji. Could somebody be so kind to tell me, how I can configure the program to automatically write in Hiragana on startup? Any help is much appreciated!

You can use Shift + Alt to switch between languages. (English, Japanese etc.)
Alt + ` (the non-caps lock of ~) to switch between Hiragana and Romaji.

Probably not what you're looking for, but I think it will help

I don't know how to set it to default to hiragana, but you can use alt + TAB to switch between languages, and shift + CAPS lock to switch to romaji when in hiragana (and back again), which can save some time. You still have to switch to hiragana manually in the first place, though...

To be honest it really never bothered me since I keep my laptop on hibernated all the time so I'm already in hiragana most of the time....

[edit]Gah, I got beat =D

Thank you guys! That already helped a lot.

Yeah it would be nice if you could set hiragana as default as i often forget its in romaji when i start typing can get a little frustrating

Which is why I love mac, the OS X Japanese is hiragana. You can pick romaji, but it's a separate IME. MUCH smarter system.

On Windows, I had to change so romaji in Japanese was Swedish layout so I can be in Japanese IME all the time, I just change between Swedish romaji and hiragana... unfortunately, this destroys some programs, swedish characters stop working in WoW for example.

Tobberoth Wrote:Which is why I love mac

Somehow, I'm not surprised. LOL.

I joke, but I lean more toward M4C as well (even though it's ridiculously overpriced).

I tried to just kill my default English keyboard altogether on XP. For some reason it doesn't work. So I just made the Japanese Keyboard default, and alt+` to change b/w hiragana and English.

On a Linux OS you can easily switch the entire OS to Japanese. I tried this, but once I switched the OS entirely to Japanase I was completely lost as to what to do with the keyboard, lol.

kazelee Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:Which is why I love mac

Somehow, I'm not surprised. LOL.

I joke, but I lean more toward M4C as well (even though it's ridiculously overpriced).

I tried to just kill my default English keyboard altogether on XP. For some reason it doesn't work. So I just made the Japanese Keyboard default, and alt+` to change b/w hiragana and English.

On a Linux OS you can easily switch the entire OS to Japanese. I tried this, but once I switched the OS entirely to Japanase I was completely lost as to what to do with the keyboard, lol.

Yeah, I'm personally a bit hesistant to change my Linux to Japanese.. I experiment with it a ton which can be hard to do with it set to Japanese since everything is interconnected in Linux... Changing to Japanese has a big impact on your terminal which translates to changing irssi etc... I might get an extra linux just for having a Japanese OS though

Heh, after spending hours trying to configure my XP to look like a mac (I got bored) I think I'm going back to using Ubuntu. The one program I use the most seems to constantly malfunction while using on XP. No, it's not anki

I found this

"non-US Keyboard Japanese IME Correct key mapping XP
Dear all,

I finally figured out a problem that I have had with key mapping and using the Japanese IME in XP. I use a UK Keyboard and in Japanese mode it defaults to the US layout. To fix this:
START
RUN
Regedit

Find the following
HK\\HKey_Local_Machine\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Control\\Keyboard Layouts\\E0010411.
Change the Layout File value from KBDUS.DLL of KBDJPN to the appropriate layout file, e.g. KBDUK.DLL, or KBDFR.DLL for French keyboard, etc.

Hopes this is of use,

Mabawsa" http://greggman.com/japan/xp-ime/xp-ime....genum=6|?q

Tell me if it works

Yufina Wrote:http://greggman.com/japan/xp-ime/xp-ime....genum=6|?q

Tell me if it works

It works but isn't a good option for people with other keyboard layouts (like Swedish) since letters like öäå stop working in some programs and stuff like '"^ etc gets odd in stuff like windows live messenger etc.

Tobberoth Wrote:

Yufina Wrote:http://greggman.com/japan/xp-ime/xp-ime....genum=6|?q

Tell me if it works

It works but isn't a good option for people with other keyboard layouts (like Swedish) since letters like öäå stop working in some programs and stuff like '"^ etc gets odd in stuff like windows live messenger etc.

I just got my Finnish keyboard working ^^. And I can use åöä, but i tell if I got some problems.. My ' " ^ works correctly in WLM (vista) :S.

EDIT: In Windows Vista, the E0010411 key doesn't exist. Instead, you should navigate to a key in the same path, but ending in 00000411.

Try running World of Warcraft with your IME set to Japanese and you'll notice that åäö stops working in it

Tobberoth Wrote:Try running World of Warcraft with your IME set to Japanese and you'll notice that åäö stops working in it

I don't have wow installed now... Maybe I can test it soon... Do you use XP or vista?

Yufina Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:Try running World of Warcraft with your IME set to Japanese and you'll notice that åäö stops working in it

I don't have wow installed now... Maybe I can test it soon... Do you use XP or vista?

I use XP Pro SP2. I hear they changed the Japanese IME quite a bit for Vista so hopefully you won't have the same issues. Personally I'm waiting for Windows 7. (Of course, my Japanese IME works perfectly in Linux since it jumps directly to hiragana from Swedish )

For some reason, edits to my registry don't seem to stick. Funny it be, the windowz.

Okey, Now I found some programs that don't recognize äöå

I currently use ALT-SHIFT to switch between EN and JA input methods, but each time i switch it starts in romaji mode. I have read that if you use the '~`' (tilde) key combined with alt/shift/ctrl it is supposed to work right, but I am on Windows7 and this does not seem to have any effect.

Does anyone know a solution for this? Is it just something i'm doing wrong? It seems like i should just be able to disable the romaji input completely since i'm switching between japanese and english and there really doesn't seem to be any point typing in JA_alphanumeric when i can just switch to english.

hotsw4p Wrote:I currently use ALT-SHIFT to switch between EN and JA input methods, but each time i switch it starts in romaji mode. I have read that if you use the '~`' (tilde) key combined with alt/shift/ctrl it is supposed to work right, but I am on Windows7 and this does not seem to have any effect.

Edit: substitute "ALT" for "SHIFT" below as the latter is incorrect information (sorry).

I believe that the Windows IME always starts with the alphanumeric input and you then have to switch to hiragana input with SHIFT- ~. (and not a combination of other keys--I'm not sure from your post if you are doing _only_ SHIFT and ~ together or not). I have a Win 7 computer and that keyboard shortcut works as it does on my Win XP computer.

I think you know this but I can't tell for sure from your post if it is switching into hiragana input that is the problem or if you want the IME to start up in hiragana input with a single keyboard shortcut, which is not possible as far as I'm aware (if someone knows how please post it!).

Did you mean Alt+` for Windows, markal?

hotsw4p, if I use Alt+Shift to switch from E to J, the JP input mode will be whatever I was last using (hiragana or alpha.) (XP and Win7)

New windows default to alpha, though. You can set the Default input mode to hiragana (in IME Properties - General - Input Settings), but it doesn't seem to do anything.

I figure it's easier to just stay in JP and use Alt+` to switch between hiragana and alpha. You can set the Default Input Language to Japanese in IME Settings (Text Services and Input Languages.)

Thora Wrote:Did you mean Alt+` for Windows, markal?

Yes, I did. Sorry to give inaccurate advice and I'm glad you corrected that.

interesting.. I see now that when i am in "JP" mode, pressing ALT+` switches between alphanumeric mode and hiragana input mode. and you are saying that if i just have the default language set to "JP", i can just use ALT+` to swap back and forth and it won't be any different than switching between "EN" mode and "JP" mode.

I am going to do that. Thank you for the tip! It's kind of a pain that the default setting in the options screen doesn't seem to cause it to behave as it should, but at least this will help me not have to use as many keystrokes all the time.

I've found theese combinations:

alt + shift: switch between languages

In Japanese:
alt + ~: switch between romaji and last other mode used
shift + caps lock: switch between half width romaji and last kana used
alt + caps lock:
- if in romaji, switch to last kana used
- if in half width romaji, half width katakana
- if in hiragana, switch to katakana
ctrl + caps lock:
- if in romaji, switch to last kana used
- if in half width, switch to hiragana
- if in katakana, switch to hiragana

Also, if you are writing in any kana mode, after you wrote something you can convert it to katakana by pressing F7 while it is underlined and to hiragana by hitting F6.

I hope this helps!!