Sometimes I'd like to enter kanji from Heisig. I know their Heisig keyword or number, but not their reading. So here's a solution for OS X that transforms, for example, "jh0004" or "jhfour" into 四. "Jh" stands for James/Japanese Heisig. This works inside any application. Note that punctuation has been stripped and everything is lowercase, e.g. "II (two)" becomes jhiitwo.

Instructions: Load the RTF file inside the following archive:

http://rapidshare.com/files/304258268/he...ansion.zip

into TextExpander for OS X (using "load group from file"):

http://www.smileonmymac.com/TextExpander/

The Python script to generate the list is included, too. If someone wants to reupload it on some more reliable webspace than rapidshare, please do and post the link! I relinquish all rights -- hereby public domain. (The original list might be copyrighted -- no idea.)

Enjoy!

[Edit: FWIW, there's probably some way to create a user dictionary for the Japanese input mode that you could then use to turn Heisig numbers into kanji, but I don't know the dictionary format. If that makes any sense. But TextExpander works well enough for me.]

If you have Rikaichan (which you should ), you can look up the kanji on this site, hover over it and get the reading.
Sure it does take a tad longer then entering just the index number, but at least it forces you to go over the reading, which is always good practice. In the end you will want to remember the readings and not the frame numbers, so any early extra practice is welcome in my opinion.

thanks epsilondelta. i thought about this a while ago but never implemented anything. also,the user dictionary is an interesting thought.

Snow Leopard has a built in text-expander, so you don't need to shell out for shareware.

Wow, I have Snow Leopard, but never noticed it had that. It doesn't seem to work in non-Cocoa applications though, and I'm not sure if you can load a list of conversions like I posted above (haven't looked into it though).

Given that TextExpander has some useful other features that I might end up using (http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=102326) I guess I might just shell out the $30.