Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Input

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This section only applies to those of you who have installed Chinese, Japanese, or Korean as additional languages, or those who are planning or thinking about doing so. Of course, you can also read on if you’re just curious about such things. I include this special section on these languages because they are a bit more complex to use than others.

Unlike most European languages and many other alphabet-based non- European languages, such as Thai, Arabic, and Hindi, where pressing a letter on the keyboard prints that letter to the screen, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean require a kind of conversion process, which is handled by a special application (actually a set of applications) called an Input Method Editor (IME). Of course, this is a Windows-world term, but I will use it for convenience’s sake. In any case, each language has its own IME, and Fedora automatically installs the appropriate IME for each of the languages you choose to install.

Although Chinese, Japanese, and Korean all require the use of an IME to get words onto the screen, the way each operates is unique due to the different writing systems of each language.

Chinese

While most people (at least those in the linguistic know) would think that Chinese would be the most complicated system, due to the fact that the writing system consists of thousands of characters, it is in fact the simplest. The Chinese IME simply takes the Romanized keyboard input, known as pinyin, and converts it into Chinese characters, or Hanzi. For the IME, it is essentially a simple dictionary lookup task — big dictionaries, simple IME.

Here are some tips for using the Chinese IME:

• CTRL + SPACE toggles the IME.

• Select Hanzi by pressing the number next to the appropriate choice in the selection palette; pressing the SPACE bar selects the first choice in the list.

• The following are the Chinese TrueType fonts: AR PL KaitiM GB, AR PL SongtiL GB, ZYSong 18030.

Japanese

The Japanese IME has a considerably more complicated task to perform, as it has three writing systems to deal with: Kanji (ideographic characters borrowed long ago from China), the phono-alphabetic hiragana (used mainly for tense and case endings), and katakana (used mainly for words borrowed from other languages). Still, the standard input method for Japanese is primarily via the standard Roman keyboard layout, plus a few extra special-function keys. Thus, typing in Japanese is a two-step process whereby the IME first converts the Romanized text into hiragana as it is typed , and then converts it to appropriate Kanji, katakana, or hiragana elements after the SPACE bar is pressed.

You can see an example of these steps in Figure 17-6.

Figure 17-6: Using the Japanese IME

In the first line, the IME has already converted the input rinakkusdenihongonyuuryokumodekimasu (which means You can also input Japanese in Linux) to hiragana on the fly. In the second line, the user has pressed the SPACE bar, which caused the IME to convert the hiragana string into the appropriate Kanji, hiragana, and katakana elements. The first word, “Linux,” has been converted to katakana text, as it is a borrowed word, while “Japanese input” and “can” have been converted to Kanji; the rest stays in hiragana.

Here are some tips for using the Japanese IME:

• SHIFT + SPACE toggles the IME.

• Press SPACE to convert hiragana strings into appropriate Kanji, katakana, and hiragana elements.

• Press ENTER to accept conversions, BACKSPACE to reject.

• The Japanese TrueType fonts are Kochi Gothic and Kochi Mincho.

Korean

The job of the Korean IME is again quite different from that of the Chinese and Japanese IMEs, as the language itself is written in a very different way. Korean is written either entirely in alphabetic letters, called Hangul, or in a combination of Hangul and ideographic characters borrowed from Chinese called Hanja. While the Hanja are essentially the same as their Chinese and Japanese counterparts, Hanzi and Kanji, the Korean phonetic alphabet, Hangul, has it own unique appearance, as you can see in the Korean word for Korea, Hangug(k), in Figure 17-7.

Figure 17-7: Korea (Hangug) written horizontally in Hangul

This seems quite simple; however, the representation is not quite correct, as Korean is quite unique in the way that its alphabetic characters are put to the page. Unlike the usual side-by-side positioning of hiragana, katakana, and most other languages written with an alphabet, Hangul letters are grouped in pairs, triplets, or even quadruplets, which are written, as a general rule, clockwise. The IME, therefore, must take the input (usually based on a Korean alphabetical keyboard layout) while it is being typed and it must adjust the size, spacing, and positioning of each letter as it puts them into appropriate clusters (see Figure 17-8 on the next page).

Figure 17-8: An example of the clustering process in the Korean IME

Here are some tips for using the Korean IME:

• SHIFT + SPACE toggles the IME.

• Press SPACE to accept Hangul clusterings.

• To convert Hangul to Hanja, press F9 before accepting Hangul clustering to bring up the Hanja selection palette. Click the appropriate choice in the palette, and then press ENTER.

• The Korean TrueType fonts are Baekmuk Batang, Baekmuk Dotum, Baekmuk Gulim, and Baekmuk Headline.

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