Excite has released a new IME. It comes with some dictionaries, for addresses etc, and also offers online translations. You can find it here http://www.excite.co.jp/world/ime/ The recognition of words while typing and the suggestions are both very accurate. I thought I share this here, in case someone is looking for an alternative to Windows or Google IME, and wants to give this one a try.

I use the ATOK IME, which I have to say is really awesome...

it corrects spelling and grammar, and will autofill the date for you... but the best part is that after I type a word, I press a key and get a pop-up definition from koujien, daijirin, daijisen, meikyo, kenkyuusha, genius and a kanji dictionary. talk about a pig in s**t...

It's great.. when making anki cards I no longer need to switch back and forth from anki to the web/offline dictionary to get definitions. Makes the card making process much quicker and easier. It's also really nice to have my choice of several different options for the most comprehensible J-definition.

Rikaisama looks pretty similar for definitions, but that is only for reading web content, whereas this is global across every program and the finder... I have it going on every computer I use regularly, mac and pc, because there is no going back ;D

ATOK would be nice to have indeed. I know how good it is from reading reviews and I will buy it myself. But for now Excite / Baidu will do. It has some really nice features as well. Adding notes on websites, maps, comes with a magnifying glass, screenshot functionality and many other gadgets. On top of that it is free, and this is why I posted it here. For most learners this should be enough for a long time. Here is a video showing it in action. http://ime.baidu.jp/type/

ATOK is not significantly better than Google IME in terms of features, has a more outdated 変換 database for new slang and celebrity/product etc names, is expensive, and is somewhat of a resource hog. Google drank their milkshake, especially now that it's open source.

It's even less useful on OSX Lion since there is a universal dictionary built in (double click with three fingers on any word to look it up in a dictionary).

Jarvik7 Wrote:ATOK is not significantly better than Google IME in terms of features, has a more outdated 変換 database for new slang and celebrity/product etc names, is expensive, and is somewhat of a resource hog. Google drank their milkshake, especially now that it's open source.

It's even less useful on OSX Lion since there is a universal dictionary built in (double click with three fingers on any word to look it up in a dictionary).

Good to know! Then, it is probably better to keep using a separate offline 辞書 and free IME, right?

ATOK would still be interesting for a hands on test. But there is no DEMO version available, or is there?

OSX comes with daijisen, but that is my least favorite kokugojisho of the four main ones. I won't argue with you about google's crowdsourcing method of accuracy for 変換 conversion, but I'm really picky about which definition I want to use for studying and having all four at the (single ;D) click of a button is amazing.

Also while I didn't pay for ATOK, for koujien, daijirin and daijisen the dictionaries are an add-in package that is very hard to find (meikyo and genius are included). Not only are they not available anywhere on the internets, you can't even buy it in america... I ended up getting them on my first trip to japan, and they were in every tech store in the atok section... about $70 each (maybe I'm a dictionary nerd).

nagareboshi Wrote:ATOK would still be interesting for a hands on test. But there is no DEMO version available, or is there?

http://btjunkie.org/ "atok"

ATOK is the best. I can't live without its grammar checker (e.g., ATOK points out non-standard grammar in your writing, not-recommended usages of particles like using the same particles more than once in a clause, and many more), language register consistency checker (e.g., ATOK picks up on it when you mix politer words and colloquial expressions in a sentence, when you accidentally switches です/ます and だ/である styles, and so on), dialect support, built-in dictionaries, and what have you. Google IME is pretty good if what you write is about celebrities and such. But for more serious writing nothing beats ATOK if you ask me.

dtcamero Wrote:Not only are they not available anywhere on the internets, you can't even buy it in america...

You can buy them online from the official website. I bought the latest version online from my apartment in the US. Digital copies are cheaper than physical disk versions too. You can also get further discounts if you're already a customer of the official online store.

Nagareboshi Wrote:But there is no DEMO version available, or is there?

The official website offers free trial versions for mac, windows, and android here:
http://www.atok.com/try/

magamo Wrote:

dtcamero Wrote:Not only are they not available anywhere on the internets, you can't even buy it in america...

You can buy them online from the official website. I bought the latest version online from my apartment in the US.

ふん、先程「ネット」の意味じゃないけど、まぁ、マガモ君が金持ちだったら好きにしよう ;D。
俺の給金は女や薬で使いたいだろう…

Bookmarked all those pages. Can't wait to try them out later today

@magamo: Wow, I did not know about the grammar checker in ATOK! Which version do you have and what settings do you have for the particle checker f.e.? I find this just very useful for me in order to learn the correct usage better when writing and getting automatically corrections from the IME..

Tori-kun Wrote:@magamo: Wow, I did not know about the grammar checker in ATOK! Which version do you have and what settings do you have for the particle checker f.e.? I find this just very useful for me in order to learn the correct usage better when writing and getting automatically corrections from the IME..

Its primary target users are native speakers, so I'm not sure if it's a great tool for learning. I don't think ATOK is very good at detecting foreign errors. Anyway, I'm using ATOK2011 for mac, and it picks up on:

ら抜き表現 (such as 食べれる vs. 食べられる; some people think the former is ungrammatical),
さ入れ表現 (such as 読まさせていただく vs. 読ませていただく; some people think the former is ungrammatical),
common misuse of popular phrases, adages, etc.,
wrong readings and kana uses (e.g., you try to kanjify これはとてもむづかしい, and it asks if you mean むずかしい because 難しい is spelled with ず in the standard orthography),
consecutive use of the same particle of a particular kind (to avoid unsophisticated writing),
ambiguous modification (i.e., it warns when it's unclear which word is grammatically modifying which),
confusing negation (e.g., わからないこともない),
informal/slangy expressions,
tautology (e.g., 被害を被る; Many careful writers avoid tautology),
です/ます (or だ/である) style inconsistency,
errors in honorifics and polite language (e.g., 申される vs. おっしゃる; Many would find the former unacceptable),
double honorifics (e.g., いらっしゃられる vs. いらっしゃる; Many people find this kind of honorifics unacceptable.),
alternative honorifics (e.g., お食べになる = 召し上がる = お召し上がりになる; in other words, kind of a thesaurus for honorific expressions)
possible misuse of homophones,
possible misuse of oft-misused expressions.

There are other minor features such as pointing out special characters which may not be displayed in other OSes.

Hey I'm trying out ATOK, is there a way to turn off having "《環境依存文字:____》" showing up after every word you've typed as you press space to edit the sentence? I can't find it in the settings.

TwoMoreCharacters Wrote:Hey I'm trying out ATOK, is there a way to turn off having "《環境依存文字:____》" showing up after every word you've typed as you press space to edit the sentence? I can't find it in the settings.

環境依存文字 is the kind of character other OSes and such may not be able to handle; as the kanji suggests, they're characters which "depend on your system." If you installed ATOK correctly and aren't using rare characters, you shouldn't get that warning every time you convert kana into kanji.

In any case, you can turn off the 環境依存文字 checker by going to 環境設定 -> 校正支援 tab -> 環境依存文字 menu if you're on mac. The Windows version should have the same menu in a similar place. You shouldn't turn it off for normal use though.

Hmph, it goes away when I set my language for non-unicode programs to Japanese. Don't know how long I'll go with this.

I torrented it though, so I'm not complaining. Thanks, マガちゃん.

Wow. First time I heard of atok. Think that's the one that suits me best.
Many thanks!

magamo Wrote:

Nagareboshi Wrote:But there is no DEMO version available, or is there?

The official website offers free trial versions for mac, windows, and android here:
http://www.atok.com/try/

Thank you. I have been trying to work with it for a while and it is a really good. What keeps me from buying it is the subscription fee. I don't want to buy software that I have to buy a new license for every year. This feels so Semantic-Antivirussian. In case there is a physical copy that offers umlimited use of the software, I might consider buying it someday, but not right now. For now the free IME is enough for me.

dtcamero Wrote:

nagareboshi Wrote:ATOK would still be interesting for a hands on test. But there is no DEMO version available, or is there?

http://btjunkie.org/ "atok"

I am not totally new around the Internet or BBS Scene but thank you anyway. I was really only asking for a demo, because I wanted to give this one a try. If I want it, i buy it. I don't say that I am not downloading, but if there is a possibility to buy, one should buy it. Not everything must be acquired for free.

むつかしい　むずかしい.

@Nagareboshi did you happen to use the BaiduIME?

Omoishinji Wrote:むつかしい　むずかしい.

@Nagareboshi did you happen to use the BaiduIME?

Yes, I am using the Excite/BaiduIME. Why are you asking?

Since I'm in Japan now, I finally downloaded the ATOK version for Android (well, the 15-day demo), and I must say, it's pretty nifty. It's the best tablet keyboard for JP that I've found so far.

Downside is that the full version is 1500 yen, but that's not a bad price to pay. Also, since it's Japan only, well, you can only get it if you're here. Which kind of sucks. But keyboard-wise, they really did hit it out of the park. It's very easy to use, and very intuitive. It's like it's reading my mind. Spooky.

So for Honeycomb, it looks great, feels great, and will probably replace all of my keyboards. I haven't tried it on my Nexus One yet to see how it runs on Gingerbread, but I think it's safe to assume that it runs just fine.