Re: tlug: Recommend Japanese KB?? (was: Re: US student moving to Tokyo)

[Jonathan Byrne <jq@example.com>]

On Mon, 21 Sep 1998, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:


> >>>>> "jb" == Jonathan Byrne <jq@example.com> writes:

>     jb> That's actually one of the things I like about them.  The
>     jb> asterisk key is shift : on a Japanese keyboard.
> 
> This is probably a plus if you haven't learned on a US keyboard.  For
> me, Shift-8 = `*' is burned in from years of C/C++ programming,
> though.  What other advantages are there to the J keyboard?

Actually, I did.  I typed on U.S.-style keyboards (only) from elementary
school until I moved to Japan four years ago at the age of 32. 

Having the colon in the home row as an unshifted key is really handing for
typing URLs and other times you might need a colon.  It's near proximity
to the / also helps make that easier and quicker.  I guess I seem to use
asterisks a lot in some of my mail and such, since I really like the
asterisk loaction on the Japanese keyboard.  The positions of ' and " have
their pluses and minuses, but overall I find them neither superior nor
inferior to their positioning on US keyboards.   The Japanese-specific
keys are very useful when using Windows, less-so when using Linux, since
they don't seem to be supported properly.  I guess you could define
custom-keybindings for that, but I haven't researched how to do that in
kinput2 and it may not be possible in Jpine.

Overall, I can't think of anything about the Japanese keyboard that I find
to be inferior Vs. a U.S. one, and there are definitely some things that
are better when typing in Japanese, so I'm settled on them.  

> ESC kills the whole henkan, which I think it does, that wouldn't
> bother me but would bother JB, for one.)

Yeah.  I'd like to be able to do a sentence at a time, but Canna is so
lousy at henkan that it has trouble even with a lot of single compounds.
"Hen" takes on great significance in "henkan" when you're using Canna :-)

> 1. the 1/4 length space bar.  Changing the keycode (easy in X) of the

Doesn't bother me.  If I can't hit a key two inches long, making it four
inches long won't help :-)  I do touch-type on Japanese keyboards.
Switching keyboards is a problem, though, so if you use both kinds, I can
see how this could trip you up.

> BTW, I trashed that xmodmap a while ago, but for a while my xmodmap
> (and fvwmrc) keyed the WinMenu key to a window manager command that
> ran xbill.  So it's not useless after all.  :-)


Hehehe :-)  Someday I might set mine up so that the Windows menu key gets
me the menu from Afterstep instead. 

Cheers,

Jonathan

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