[tlug] Japanese Encoding / 9.1-9.3 Upgrade

["Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon" <ronfaxon@example.com>]

I just did an upgrade of a test machine from SuSE 9.1 (a machine I'd 
experimented with, but never actually been able to input Japanese with) 
to SuSE 9.3.  I installed it in English, with Japanese listed as a 
secondary language to support.  In hitting Shift+Space, I get the 
conversion box, but what I'm getting when I try to write Japanese, is 
just garbled characters.  When I click on the conversion box, I'm 
getting this list of choices for Japanese:

M17N-ja-anthy
M17N-ja-tcode
UIM-anthy
UIM-skk
UIM-tcode
UIM-tutcode

Hmmm.... now I've forgotten what I had in the first place, but 
M17N-ja-anthy is working....  I've never seen so many choices for 
encoding.  Is there some explanation for these somewhere?  I'm not sure 
what to search for with this.....

Wait a second - I'll try each of them out:

M17N-ja-anthy - seems to be working fine.

M17N-ja-tcode - seems to be direct input?  Here a Japanese keyboard with 
the hiragana keys marked would help!

UIM-anthy - seems to be working fine.

UIM-skk - text input via romaji turns to hiragana as usual, but no kanji 
conversion seems possible.  For hiragana input only it seems.

UIM-tcode - another hiragana key input method I think.....

UIM-tutcode - still another.....

Well, based on that, the only two that work for standard hiragana input 
(via romaji) that is convertable to kanji, seem to be:

M17N-ja-anthy & UIM-anthy

Now that I've narrowed it down to two - which of the two is better for 
inputting Japanese text?  Is there a compatibility issue with either of 
them?

Oh - by the way - BANZAI!!!!  Many an hour I've spent trying to get that 
text machine to input Japanese, and *finally* I'm successful!  Banzai 
SuSE 9.3!!!

Lyle