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

[Kai MacTane]

On 10/29/2016 13:21, agoats at compuserve.com wrote:
>
> 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?

This is what's called a "Japanese input method editor" or "Japanese IME" 
for short. You'd install it as a core part of your GUI layer (Gnome, 
KDE, whatever), not as part of any individual app.

I generally use Linux as a server platform, so my Japanese IME 
experience is all on Windows and Android. Wikipedia's List of input 
methods for UNIX platforms 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_input_methods_for_Unix_platforms> 
may have some useful starting points for you, or just knowing that 
"Japanese input method" and "Japanese IME" are things to search on may 
help you.

-- 
Kagan MacTane