The best way to try out the Japanese wordprocessor is to create a new document and enter some Japanese text. To create a new document, select Document from the New submenu of the Text menu and you will be presented with the File save dialog similar to the one shown below in Figure 1.
MacOS
Windows
To create a new folder, press the New button and enter the name of a folder. To go into a folder (folders are marked with a folder icon on their left side in the New file dialog), simply double-click the folder name.
You should always save your files in the same place to ensure you can find them again later. Press the Save button once you have entered the name of the file you wish to create (and its location), and the Text dialog will be displayed, ready for you to begin entering your text. The Text dialog is shown in Figure 2.
The Japanese input system
The new Japanese input system in JWM v5.x is very streamlined, and detailed information about how to enter Kana, Kanji and English text using the Input dialog (shown below in Figure 3) can be found in the Japanese input system link of the help system. The Help contents page is also directly accessible via the Info menu, or you can press the Help button (the button with the question mark in it) on the Input dialog itself.
Entering English text
We'll start by entering some English text. Press the Direct roman input button (the button with the 'A' and down arrow in it) and type in some English. You will see that you can enter text into your document just like any English wordprocessing program. If you press the One-byte roman table button (the button below the Direct roman input button), you can click any character in the table to enter it into your document. The two buttons on the right of the one-byte roman table button bring up tables for Extended European characters.
Entering Kana
To enter Hiragana, press the Direct Hiragana button on the top left of the Input dialog. You can now type Romaji on your keyboard and it will be dynamically converted into Hiragana and inserted into your document. For example, type in 'sakura' and the Hiragana, 'さくら' should be entered. If you press the Hiragana table button (below the Direct Hiragana button), a table of Hiragana will be displayed from which you can select characters (shown in Figure 4). Now, try out the Direct Katakana and Katakana table buttons, as well as the Two-byte roman buttons. Note: You can also type in Hiragana, Katakana and two-byte roman characters when their respective tables are displayed.
Entering Kanji
To enter Kanji, click the Kanji button (the button on the right side of the textbox on the Input dialog). You will see the Input dialog change into Kanji input mode, as shown in Figure 5 below. Now when you type in Romaji, the Hiragana will be used to build up as Kanji reading. When you have entered a Kanji reading, press the Spacebar to trigger a Kanji lookup.
You can scroll up and down this list of Kanji in various ways. You can use the scroll bar on the left side of the Input dialog, or press the Up and Down arrows on the keyboard to scroll through the list. If you hold down the Shift key when using the arrow keys, Kanji will scroll a page at a time, rather than a line at a time. To select a Kanji from the list, you can either click it with the mouse or press the Return key (Enter on the PC) when the Kanji you want is highlighted. You can also hold down the Option key (Right-Alt on the PC) to select a Kanji directly from those displayed. Thus, you can use the keyboard totally for Kanji input, if you find this method of entry faster.
Notes:
The Kanji button works in conjunction with the Radical button (the button next to the Kanji button which controls the display of the Radical dialog). When the Radical dialog is displayed, it also filters selected Kanji when you have radicals highlighted. You can combine any radicals which occur in the Kanji you are looking for to hone down the list of Kanji displayed. Of course, you can also combine it with other Kanji information as well.
There is an additional feature in the input system which offers more streamlined entry of Kanji. If you hold down the shift key when typing the first character of a Hiragana, the Input dialog will change automatically into Kanji input mode and change back to Hiragana input mode once you have entered a Kanji. To try out this function, start in Hiragana input mode (ie. make sure the top left button on the Input dialog is pressed in) type in 'Kyoku', press the space bar and select a Kanji character from the list displayed.
Saving your document
When you have a text file ready to save to disk, you should consider which Japanese text format you should use. The recommended format is Unicode, since this format is emerging as the international standard for text documents in all world languages (though it is only now becoming accepted). Unicode is supported in MacOS 8.5 and Windows 95/98/NT. The most common format in use around the world is Shift-JIS, which is used by KanjiTalk and the Japanese Language Kit on the MacOS.
To select the Japanese text format used to save your document, press the File save formats button at the top of the Text dialog. This will display the File save formats dialog shown in Figure 7 below. Select the format you want from the set of radio buttons under the title: File save. All subsequent text files you save will use the Japanese text format selected.
Whenever a document is edited and the changes not yet saved to disk, you will see the Modified diamond displayed in the bottom left corner of the Text dialog. When the text file is saved to disk, the diamond will disappear.
Getting information about the currently open document
To get information about the size of the currently open document and the counts of the different types of characters used (eg. Kana, Kanji, English, etc.), press the Character/new line counts button on the top of the Text dialog. This will bring up the Text file information dialog (a sample is shown in Figure 8 below).
Stationary
Stationary are also called Style sheets or Templates in some wordprocessors, and they allow you to create a master document and then use that to easily create similar documents. Any amount of stationary documents can be created, and each can be up to 32kb in size.
To create a stationary document, simply prepare any normal document using the JWM wordprocessor and store it in the Templat folder. When you next press the Stationary button, you will see your file listed.
Removing HTML tags
The Tag removal button (the button with the cross in it) is used to remove all HTML tags from your text document. This may be useful when you have saved a HTML web page from the Internet and wish to read it without the HTML tags cluttering up the text. The second last button is the Look button, and this is used when you wish to view your HTML web page in the Japanese WordMage browser.
Automatic text format conversion
If you are running a Japanese operating system (such as the Japanese Language Kit on MacOS), you could try cutting and pasting text between JWM and other Japanese-enabled applications. JWM will automatically detect and convert text from many different Japanese formats, so you never need to concern yourself with which format you are using (this is great when you get Japanese text in emails - you just copy and paste the text into JWM and it does all the work for you). However, you can easily change the clipboard format using the button on the top of the Text dialog displaying a clipboard icon (see Figure 9 below).
You also have full control over which dictionaries are used for Kana-to-Kanji conversion (select Kana-to-Kanji dictionary list... from the Preferences submenu in the Edit menu to see which dictionaries are used), and you can edit entries in these dictionaries and add entries in the same way as you can with the Flashcard dictionary list and Reference dictionary list (all the dictionary lists in Japanese WordMage work in a similar way, even though the lists are used for different purposes by the program).
To edit an entry in the 'Kana conversion WNN' dictionary, for example, open the Find word dialog by selecting Search... from the Dictionary menu and select Kana-to-Kanji dictionary as the dictionary to find words in. Now type information into the Find word dialog which will help locate the entry you wish to edit (such as the Kanji's reading) and press the Spyglass button to begin a search. Matching words will be shown in the Output list. Highlight the word you wish to edit by clicking it, and then select Edit from the Word menu - this will display the Edit word dialog. Make any changes you wish and then press the Save button to save the changes. Now close the dictionary (select Close from the Dictionary menu) to complete the editing operation.
To add an entry to the 'Kana conversion WNN' dictionary, open the Find word dialog and select the 'Kana conversion WNN' dictionary from the popup menu. Now select New... from the Word menu and enter the information for the entry you wish to add into the New word dialog. Press the Save button (on the bottom right of the New word dialog) to save the entry, then close the dictionary (select Close from the Dictionary menu) to complete the operation. Of course, you may wish to create your own custom Kana conversion dictionary instead, add it to the Kana-to-Kanji dictionary list and add entries to that.
Printing a document
To prepare to print a document, press the 'Document settings' button on the top of the Text dialog and the Document settings dialog will be displayed (shown in Figure 10 below). This will allow you to set the font size used for printing (values between 12 and 24 points are possible), as well as the print margins of the document.