Quickstart

Enter a word or phrase phonetically using the English keyboard, and it will appear immediately as Hiragana, and can be converted to Kanji by selecting from the displayed list of matching words using the indicated numeral key or mouse. To leave the Hiragana unconverted, press Space or Esc instead of selecting from the dictionary list. For example, type nihongo1 to get 日本語, or ogenkideska then Space to get おげんきですか.

If the same Hiragana string matches (or partly matches) more than nine Japanese words, use PageDown and PageUp to scroll through the list.

Keyboard Use Details

Step by step

The following step-by-step example shows what happens as each letter is typed:

n	The Hiragana letter ん for syllable-final 'n' will appear in the output window. As no words in Japanese can start with ん, the IME title bar will be shown, indicating that the IME is active with text pending, but no list will be displayed:
i	The Hiragana will change to に (the syllable for 'ni'), and the KeymanWeb IME window will now display a list of Kanji matching に (with a white background), and Kanji starting with に (with a grey background):
h	As more letters are added, they are automatically converted to Hiragana, and the list of exact and starting matches to Kanji words is updated accordingly:
on	Two words are now shown exactly matching にほん, and more words starting with にほん (against a grey background):
go	The exact match for にほんご is now displayed in the first box with a white background (and other words starting with にほんご with a grey background):
1	Press 1 (or Enter) to select the first displayed Kanji and close the IME window:

When the IME is showing a list of suggestions, typing any digit (or selecting from the list with the mouse) will replace the pending Hiragana by the selected Kanji. Pressing Enter will always select the first displayed Kanji. Pressing Space or Esc will close the IME window leaving the Hiragana or Katakana as displayed. Similarly, typing any punctuation key will insert the typed punctuation character after the currently displayed kana, then close the IME window. But if Space, Enter or any digit or punctuation key is typed before any letter key (or when the IME title bar and list are not visible), it will be output directly into the document.

Entering Katakana

To enter Katakana, enter as for Hiragana, but press and release Shift before pressing Space or Escape to accept the entered text.

For example, type amerika followed by Shift then Space to get アメリカ.

At any time, pressing Shift will toggle the pending text between Hiragana and Katakana.

Hiragana matching many Kanji words

The IME will only display nine words at a time, but if more matches have been returned from the dictionary lookup, it will be indicated by a green arrowhead in the right-most box. Clicking that icon, or pressing PageDown, will show the next nine matches, etc. Pressing PageUp (or clicking the green arrowhead in the left-most box) will move back to the previously displayed matches. All exactly matching Kanji words and up to twenty partly-matched words will be returned from the dictionary, with more commonly used words shown first. Pressing Home will always go back to the start of the list, and show the most frequently used matching words.

English glosses

If uncertain of the right Kanji to use, an English gloss for each dictionary word can be seen by moving the mouse cursor over the box with that word:

Romanization (Wāpuro rōmaji) conventions

Input follows widely-used Wāpuro rōmaji conventions, but note the following:

• Long vowels are entered using kana spelling rules, thus, kou for こう and kuu for くう.
• Small kana can be entered by prefacing them with x, e.g. xa for ぁ, or xtu for っ.
• When typing, the letter l is generally equivalent to r.
• じゃ, じゅ and じょ may be input by typing either ja, ju and jo, or jya, jyu and jyo.
• Either -tchi or -cchi may be used to produce っち.
• To prevent a syllable-final n from being treated as the start of the following syllable, insert a single quote after the n'. This is generally only necessary when the second syllable starts with a vowel or semi-vowel (y or w). So typing kanou produces かのう, but typing kan'ou will produce かんおう.

Typing ahead

You do not need to wait for the IME to display the list of possible Japanese words after each key-stroke. The IME recognizes if more characters have been typed and will only display the suggestions for the complete string that has been entered. If you know which word you will want from the final list for a typed string, you can type the selection digit and keep on typing. In most cases, the IME will remember what has been typed and process the entire input sequence correctly.

If the IME for any reason does not process the string at the insertion point correctly, press Escape to close the IME window, re-position the cursor as required, then continue entering text normally.

Editing existing text

Japanese text already entered into an input area may be edited in the normal way, using cut and paste or the Backspace and Delete keys, and moving through the document with the cursor (arrow) keys. But once a letter is re-typed at any point, the IME will convert the input to Hiragana and try and find matching Japanese words.

Troubleshooting

The IME window is not visible

If the IME window does not appear when a letter key is typed, then either the site has not been configured to use KeymanWeb, or else the input area you are entering text into cannot accept Japanese text. For example, it is not yet generally possible to use email addresses written with Japanese Kanji, so email address fields will not accept Kanji.

A delay of one or two seconds may be experienced in some cases before the IME window is updated. This is normal, and the more the IME is used, the faster the average response will be, since it remembers the results for words already looked up.

After I started typing, the IME window disappeared...

If the IME window disappears after typing some letters but before the selected Kanji has been inserted, check:

• Was Space, Escape or a punctuation key pressed? If so, the IME will assume that the entered text should remain displayed as Hiragana or Katakana.
• Has the focus been moved to another input area? Moving the focus also causes the IME to leave the entered text as currently displayed.
• Has the keyboard been disabled? Check the KeymanWeb toolbar - the selected language should be Japanese.
• Is the input area near the bottom of the screen? If so, the IME window may be off-screen, so scroll down so that the input area is no longer near the edge of the screen.

Please read the KeymanWeb troubleshooting guide for further information.

For any other questions, contact us.

Technical Information

System Requirements

It is recommended that you use an English QWERTY hardware keyboard with this keyboard.

Unicode Version

This keyboard complies with Unicode 5.1