I'm pretty sure such a thing does not exist, and there really wouldn't be that much market or interest in it, IMO.  When you're actually typing Japanese, how do you know you need to type 凝?  Usually, it's because whatever you're typing has the word 凝視, or 凝る, or whatever -- and if you have the word, why go through all the rigmarole of typing in parts of kanji when you can just type the word you're already thinking of and let the IME do the job of constructing the kanji for you?

I guess most people want to type what they say, not what they see. I push a key because that's what I'm hearing in my head. IME is great because it interprets what I said in my head and automatically kanjifies it.

原子力発電所
Anthy, romaji: gensiryokuhatudensho<SP><RET> (22 strokes)
Anthy, kana: け濁んしりょくはつて濁んしょ<SP><RET> (16 strokes, 2 shifted)
CangJie3: 一竹日火　弓木　大尸　弓人一大山　一月田山　竹尸竹一中<SP> (28 strokes)
TUT-CODE: ;REYSOHJJRKL (12 strokes)

romaji: 3.7 strokes per character
kana: 2.7
CangJie3: 4.7
TUT: 2.0

I think I can average 4-6 strokes per kanji, putting me on par with CangJie or a little slower than romaji conversion.  Of course, I can't "prove it" yet, but it certainly seems possible.

For kana, I'm within 1-3 strokes per kana, probably with an average of two: the system I have worked out is basically a rearrangement of TUT's kana input plus faster 拗音. 

げんしりょくはつでんしょ  is 20 strokes: .  That's exactly equal to romaji input. 

To be honest, speed is not my goal.  If it was, I'd be implementing and learning TUT.  The real issue I have with 変換 is later in the typing process.

My main goal is to make a dumb system.  When using conversion, you have to a) type what you would say, b) check it for mistakes, c)check the conversion for mistakes, d) fix them. 

So far, I've only analyzed stage A.  Stage B mistakes can be reduced (but not eliminated) through training.  Stage C mistakes can be reduced (but not eliminated) with better conversion software.  Stage D is universally a pain.  If you missed a typing error, you not only have to correct it, you have to find it first.  If you have a conversion error, you have to figure out what it is, how to correct it, and issue the right sequence of commands to fix it.

This requires a fairly high degree of reading fluency.  Say you want to type 判断, but you get 三段.  If you can read well, you'll recognize that you typed an s when you should have typed an h.  Now let's say you want 以外, but you get 意外.  That's a case where you did everything correctly, but the conversion failed.  This isn't a problem for someone who already reads Japanese well, but what about students who don't yet?  Should we say "learn to read fluently before you do any typing?"  We might as well stick to paper dictionaries while we're at it.

Yudan actually does make a good point.  Most typing is in words.  However, let's say you're a student looking up a new four-character compound.   You know an 音読み for the first and third character, a 訓読み for the first, and (thanks to RtK) how to write all of them.  The best you can do with 変換 is type in the characters you know--which only works if they don't have too many homophones--and multi-radical the ones you don't. 

I don't know about other students, but I hate using a mouse to hunt-and-peck KangXie radicals. 

Finally, Magamo's right: typists "hear" what they're typing more than they feel how it would be written by hand.  For example, when I type the word "the," I don't think "T---H---E," I just think "the" and my fingers press the right sequence (actually "kjd").  That those sequences don't have have to be based on sound.  The popularity of non-phonetic input among Chinese typists proves that.  I guess the biggest difference is where the conversion happens: in the computer (which can't read your mind) or in your cerebellum (which can, but requires training).

Anyway, that's the why.  I'm not trying to convince anyone to give up 変換.  I'm just not happy with it myself.  If it works for you there's no reason to switch.  I was hoping that either someone could point out something I missed, or be willing to give my personal hack a try.

If anyone is interested in that, I'm more than happy to share.

EDIT: PS.  This will require me creating a database of Hesig-style decompositions, which may be useful for other projects, even if you don't use it for your normal typing.  Yes, I'm willing to share that, too.

Last edited by wildweathel (2009 November 20, 10:18 am)

That's a really cool idea Would certainly help with not forgetting how to write kanji just because you type most of the time

donjorge22 wrote:

Not so sure I like this idea.  If you're so bothered about getting the right kanji, why not just use a tablet IME (mine cost just a little more than £20 and works great).

I've looked.  There simply aren't decent handwriting recognition systems for free OSes, no matter how much you pay.  Maybe someone will get around to cloning OS X's hanzi-on-touchpad feature, but I doubt it.

The reverse problem applies as well.  MS-IME can't load custom tables.  IBus, SCIM, and the OpenSolaris IME can.  Since I'm currently implementing this as a Python program that makes an IBus table, I don't know a good way to include Windows users.  (Maybe Autohotkey, but I don't know if has the ability to handle the type of conversions I want.)

Save your time man! Go and do some learning instead, this just sounds like a great way to procrastinate to me :p

Don't worry.  I'm timeboxing this.

That said, if someone already had a database of the RTK primitive decompositions, that would save me a lot of time.  A lot.

Sorry for double post, but...

Since I'm currently implementing this as a Python program that makes an IBus table, I don't know a good way to include Windows users.

Leave Windows users out? I think your idea would be far more useful to Linux users in any case (myself included), since the alternatives aren't up to scratch.  Would actually be great if you did that

wildweathel wrote:

My ideal IME would be based on stroke-order decomposition of the elements within a character: thanks to RTK, 凝 is already in my memory as 冫匕矢マ疋, why can't I just type it that way?

I remember a couple of months ago there was someone who used something that sounded a lot like what you're describing. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the member nor the system he used, but those posts are certainly available if you can find them.

Are you using MS-IME or other default Japanese IMEs for your OS and complaining about the input method? It's like saying PCs suck when you use your Dell laptop out of the box and surf the internet without knowing what an internet browser means. People in the know use better software than bundled crap, right? The same goes for IMEs. People who know how IMEs should work use ATOK.

It analyzes your sentence and gives much more accurate suggestions based on grammar, collocation, context, etc. It also catches certain grammar errors, non-standard conjugations, unusual writing style changes (e.g., です/ます to だ/である switch), casual/informal conjugations and so on, and gives you warnings. You can type in a major dialect too.

For example, I'm converting がっこうからかえってきたらてれびみれるよ right now, and it shows 学校から帰ってきたらテレビ見れるよ, warns that 見れるよ is ら抜き表現, and suggests 見られるよ as a proper conjugation. I convert わかんない, and it says "くだけた表現" because it's a casual form of 分からない.

Some versions have 明鏡国語辞典 as a built-in J-J dictionary, so you can read the entry for each alternative kanjification while typing; a shortened dictionary entry pops up right next to each suggestion. As I said somewhere on RTK forums, the dictionary is like "learners' dictionary" for native speakers. It focuses on contemporary word usage and differences between synonyms/homonyms. For example, you can read the dictionary's explanation for the difference between 会う, 逢う, 遭う, and 遇う, all of which mean "meet" or "see" in English, while you're typing あう. There is a short-cut command to read the unabridged version of the dictionary entry for each word you're typing too.

Of course it doesn't work very well if your grammar isn't good because your sentence only confuses ATOK. It can't analyze your Japanese well if you ignore collocations and use unusual wording. But it's not the software's problem. If your Japanese is too irregular and unnatural, any kind of writing support software doesn't work well.

I think it's great if you make a similar IME for non-native speakers. You might modify the grammar analyzer so it detects/corrects typical errors by native English speakers; ATOK is good at picking up on errors by native speakers but may just be confused by unusual errors. It might be a good idea to replace the J-J dictionary with a J-E dictionary for beginning/intermediate learners.

Anyway, I think input methods should be improved in this direction. IMEs are not just kanji converters. A good IME assists your writing.

Is there any easy way to create an IME in windows? I know it is pretty simple on Linux/Mac

samesong wrote:

magamo wrote:

I convert わかんない, and it says "くだけた表現" because it's a casual form of 分からない.

That sounds like it would be quite annoying after a while! I have both ATOK and the standard MS IME installed at work, and honestly, sometimes ATOK tries to be TOO smart. I'm not at work so I can't give you a specfic example right now, but I remember trying to get just one kanji to show up, like typing ぎょうto get 凝　or something. ATOK didn't recognize that as a word, so I couldn't get the damned kanji to show up.

Though I'm sure the benefits of outweigh small annoyances such as that.

You can turn off specific features though. You can also add specific words and personalize it. But if I want to get 凝 and that's the only kanji I want, I'd type ぎょうし and delete 視 because I know I can get 凝視; that's one of the most frequent words using 凝 and no homonyms would appear. Actually if you fail to get a correct kanji compound from kana and try to get the right one by this method, ATOK asks you if you want to include the kanjified version for the kana so it gives the kanji compound next time.

ATOK isn't perfect, but it works much better than MS-IME and ことえり (the default IME for Mac) for me. The most annoying thing when it comes to MS-IME is that it gets stupider and stupider as it "learns" users' styles... Have you experienced this?

http://furukawablog.spaces.live.com/Blo … 9079.entry

By the way, I think you misquoted another person's post in the first half of your post. It's not me.

wildweathel wrote:

原子力発電所
Anthy, romaji: gensiryokuhatudensho<SP><RET> (22 strokes)
Anthy, kana: け濁んしりょくはつて濁んしょ<SP><RET> (16 strokes, 2 shifted)

Nitpick: <RET> is not required. You can simply start typing whatever you want to enter next or click a relevant button. The only time you'd need a <RET> is when you want to submit the default action for a form or start a new line, in which case you'd have to do <RET><RET> instead of <RET>.

Keystrokes should not be the metric though, avg. kanji-per-minute rate should be. If it takes longer because you have to think of every part of the kanji, the order they come in, and the corresponding code and then input it than it does to just type the reading, then there is no point. This IS an issue because most Japanese people have become ワープロ馬鹿.

Direct entry is interesting, but superfluous given a smart enough IME. It would make a useful alternative to 手書き when you are trying to lookup an unknown character though.

samesong wrote:

from article wrote:

検証苑　"腱鞘炎"とどうしても変換入力できないので、検索エンジンでネットにて検索してコピペしました

Hah, I actually had this exact problem. It means tendinitis, and I was looking around for some problems regarding this because I'm an avid (but crappy) rock climber with some pain in my elbows and wrists. Stupid IME wouldn't convert it correctly.

It sounds like a quote from someone who (no offence) doesn't know how to use computers very well. Most IME learn, so you can teach them the correct kanjification. Ex: my girlfriend's name is written with weird readings. I only had to hunt through the suggestion box individually for each kanji a few times before it automatically started outputting 英里名 for えりな. There are occasions where a word's kanji will not even appear in the individual selection box. Using the IME keyboard interface you can then change which part of the reading it will try to convert and find the kanji individually this way, or you can just enter it into your user dictionary so it'll come up easily next time. There are a number of pre-compiled "improved" dictionaries on the internet for various IME systems to save you the effort. For reference, KOTOERI on osx brings it up as the first suggestion no problem in the default dictionary.

Also, as magamo says, commercial IME like ATOK are a lot smarter.

Kotoeri has only gotten smarter over time for me, but the English auto-spellcheck on my iphone has gotten idiotic over the past few months. It doesn't even fix im -> I'm much of the time now. It's probably because it is meant to fix typos, not something the user repeatedly enters on purpose (in my case to speed typing by skipping the punctuation kb), so it is learning "im" as a word.

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2009 November 21, 12:12 am)