[Techtalk] How to do Multi-Language documents and e-mail...

[agoats@compuserve.com]

All,

I've embarked into learning a different language, Japanese to be 
specific. Boredom, lack of anything worth watching on domestic TV, no 
cable, etc, I started into Japanese anime, manga, crazy commercials on 
YouTube and some drama/movies from Japan. Consequently, subs and dubs 
are frequently AWFUL. When a young boy is speaking with the deep voice 
of a 40's something adult male... a long monologue having to do they 
"Yahallo" is subtitled as a single word "Hi".... you get the drift.

The issue is how to set up my system to be able to compose Japanese in 
OpenOffice/Libre Office and in Thunderbird. It would be nice if midnight 
commander, dolphin and others would show the Japanese characters which 
they currently do not, even though I installed ALL language sets during 
my Slackware64 install.


In some of the Japanese videos, you can see their computer screen while 
typing and it starts with Hiragana text and converts to Kanji as they 
continue to type (for those who don't know, there are 3 characters sets, 
Hiragana for Japanese words, Katakana that is normally used for foreign 
words like computer, coffee, English/German/Russian names and lastly 
Kanji, the Chinese characters used by Japan). Written Japanese is a mix 
of all 3 at once.  As the word is being typed in Hiragana syllables, 
when enough syllables forms a Kanji word, it gets changed to Kanji. If 
additional syllables modify the Kanji word, the Kanji is changed again.  
So.... is this special software or is it common in OpenOffice and 
Thunderbird once I get the settings set correctly?

Major Issue:  I MUST be able to use English most of the time, but I want 
to use Japanese natively when I want. That means I type a character on 
my keyboard and it is a Japanese character and not English. Ideally, I 
should use my English keyboard to type the Japanese characters.

I'm certain the multitude of multilingual members of this group have 
dealt with this routinely and I'm looking for pointers. As for RTFM, 
been there and not much help. I can make it strictly Japanese and no 
clear way to go back to English unless I force it back. There's 
something missing or not explained clearly.

And if Miwa-chan is still on this group, I may eventually be able to 
read your papers you've told me about offline, but are all in Japanese!

Alvin