Re: Chinese kanji, etc.

On Sat, 13 Jan 2007 12:32:48 +0900, John R. Yamamoto-Wilson wrote:

If you have access to Akihabara or a discount computer store, try to get
the software from there. I have 12 Logo Vista dictionaries that I bought
in Akihabara at various times for about a third of the list price. They're
really neat because all 12 combine in a single user interface.

OK. This might be the way to go. I've got pretty comprehensive
information in book form (Spahn and Hadamitzky for standard kanji and a
Gotai Jikan for the variant scripts - including reisho, of course, which
was what prompted this thread!), as well as my trusty Zaurus (which I
gave up hooking up the computer years ago, because it's so fiddly), and
I much appreciate Jim Breen's dictionary; the only difficulty I have is
inputting obscure kanji.

If you use Jim Breem's dictionary to look up something out of the way in
'Find Kanji in the Database' make sure you check if you want to include JIS
X 0212 kanji. As an example, let's select 'stroke count' as our means of
selection. Now put in '22' as the keyword. You'll get a list of 22 stroke
characters. Put a check in the block for the second to the last and click
on 'view kanji details'. Make sure the radio button is on "see an
explanation of the information fields for the selected kanji" and click on
continue.

Information about: IMAGE ????

What do you know!? I can't cut and paste the character because it's not
text - it's graphics. The note says:

NB: This kanji is from JIS X 0212-1990

The information is as follows.

JIS code 6D61
Kuten 77-65
Unicode 9fa2
Bushu (radical no.) 214
Stroke Count 22
Cross-reference code J04f42
Morohashi index 48886
SKIP code 1-17-5
Pinyin reading(s) he2
Korean reading(s) hwa
ON reading(s) ワ オ カ
KUN reading(s) やわ.らぐ やわ.らげる なご.む なご.やか
English meanings in harmony; calm; peaceful

We don't have a S-JIS code but we do have the Unicode of 9fa2. Let's go to
our MS Word document and make sure we've got the IME set to JP with the IME
pad icon showing. Click on it and click on the second choice down '文字一覧'.
On the drop down menu top left make sure unicode is showing. Go about two
thirds down the list of characters until you get to 0x9FA2. Click on it.
A graphical image of the characte you need will appear in your MS Word
document. Because it is graphical in nature, I can't show it in this post.

If this makes sense, you've started to grasp the concept of advanced
character input. The more you fool around with the IME, the more you will
discover.

Once you start seeing the limitations of entering advanced characters with
the Japanese IME, you may decide that you want to input them through one of
the Chinese IMEs. The advantage is that you'll be able to enter characters
as text that you can only enter as graphics in the JP IME. The
disadvantage is that Japanese characters and Chinese characters are not
always identical. Additionally, I'm assuming your English and Japanese are
better than your Chinese.

Phil Yff
.

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