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In relating to the Japanese language and computers, unique adaptation
issues arise. Many problems relate to transliteration and romanization, some
to character encoding, and some to the input of Japanese text.
Modern Japanese is usually input into a computer via romanization. There
are two main systems for the romanization of Japanese, known as Kunrei-shiki
and Hepburn. The Kunrei system is used widely in Japan for input on a roman
keyboard, since it is slightly briefer and more systematic than the Hepburn
system. Foreigners typically prefer the Hepburn system however, because the
Kunrei system does not correspond as well to the actual sounds of Japanese.
Character Encoding
There are several standard methods to encode characters for use on a
computer, including JIS, SJIS, EUC, and Unicode. While mapping the set of
kana is a simple matter, kanji has proven more difficult. Because the
Japanese kanji differ slightly or significantly from the corresponding
characters in Chinese, it has proven both challenging and controversial to
construct an encoding system which encompasses both Chinese and Japanese
characters equitably.
Unicode has been criticized in Japan (as well as in China and Korea)
because it assigns the same code to similar characters from various East
Asian languages, even though the character may varies in terms of form and
pronunciation [1]. Unicode is also criticized for failing to allow for older
and alternate forms of kanji. Though Japanese computer users have almost no
trouble handling contemporary text, ancient Japanese language research has
been considerably handicapped by this limitation.
This problem has led to the continued wide use of many encoding
standards, despite increased Unicode use in other countries. For example,
most Japanese e-mail and web pages are encoded in SJIS or JIS rather than
Unicode. This has led to the problem of mojibake (misconverted characters)
and much unreadable Japanese text on computers.
Input method
Japanese text input is a complicated matter not only because of the
encoding problems discussed above but also because it is practically
impossible to type all of characters used in Japanese writing system with a
finite set of keys in keyboards. On modern computers, Japanese is input on a
standard keyboard via romanization combined with an Input Method Editor
which allows the user to choose the correct characters from a list. There is
also another method, known as Oyayubi shift, developed by Fujitsu, which
allows direct kana input, but this method is now obsolete.
Gaiji
Because a number of often-used characters are omitted in a standard
character set such as JIS or even Unicode, gaiji (external character) is
sometimes used to supplement the character set. However, with the spread of
computer networking and the Internet, gaiji is no longer used as frequently.
As a result, omitted characters are written with similar or simpler
characters in their place.
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