Complex Language Support for PDA's? 168
Jasin Natael asks: "What PDA's/Smartphones, etc. support complex languages in addition to more 'standard' languages? I'm a student of Japanese and am looking for a new PDA or smartphone that operates in English, but supports complex character sets. Input is a plus, but it's really needed for Contacts, Notes, Websites, and incoming E-Mail at a minimum. Would it be easy to add support to a Linux PDA (Zaurus) or Pocket PC for this? What about right-to-left languages, like Hebrew and Arabic?"
Will the Zaurus do? (Score:1)
FP rocks
Re:Will the Zaurus do? (Score:1)
Complex language support? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Complex language support? (Score:2)
Complicated maybe, complex no (Score:2)
CJKOS (Score:5, Informative)
Re:CJKOS (Score:1)
Re:CJKOS (Score:2, Informative)
Re:CJKOS (Score:2, Interesting)
Kanji is the "defaul" alphabetic. It's done the chinese way, so each letter represents a whole word.
Hiragana is then a "backup alphabetic" with each letter meaning one syllable, for example ka, ke, ki, ko, ku, tsu, chi, n, a, e, to, te.
Hiragana is used when the writer doesn't know the right kanji letter for the word he wants to write or when there isn't such kanji letter at all.
Kataka
Re:CJKOS (Score:2)
Hiragana is used extensively for grammar, wheras the Kanji form the root of most nouns, verbs, and adjectives, etc. Hiragana handle conjugation of those words, tense, all the preopsitions etc.
Katakana are used for foreign words (gairaigo) but also for emphasis. In many places where english speakers would put a word into italics, the word will appear in katakana. BTW, "
Re:CJKOS (Score:1)
Re:CJKOS (Score:1)
In this list we have the following words in katakana: "neko" (cat), "myao" (meow), "daiji" (important), "mikadzu
Re:CJKOS (Score:1)
Re:CJKOS (Score:2)
Whoa - TLA mixup! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Whoa - TLA mixup! (Score:1)
Though to be totally honest, my next thought was, "like what, Perl?" But I guess an AC got that one before I showed up here.
--
Daniel
MMMmmm... Automata Theory... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Whoa - TLA mixup! (Score:1)
Re:Whoa - TLA mixup! (Score:1)
Right to Left? (Score:4, Funny)
Easily Fixed.. Where is my million dollars?
Give me a Job... Resume is at http://www.newberrycollege.net
I don't know... (Score:4, Informative)
A couple programs (Score:5, Informative)
Neopad Nihongo Input Romazi [freewarepalm.com]
I haven't tried either of the above, though...
Also, the program Dokusha [freewarepalm.com], while also being a good English-Japanese dictionary, comes with some Japanese fonts.
Easy answer (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Easy answer (Score:2)
Re:Easy answer (Score:1)
Palm OS handles those, but one-at-a-time (Score:5, Informative)
A few choice URLs:
http://www.penreader.com/PalmOS/PiLoc.html [penreader.com]
Hebrew Localization [pilotgear.com]
Chinese OS for Palm OS [waterworld.com.hk]
Zaurus.. but not the models you think.. (Score:4, Informative)
Zaurus is the bomb (Score:5, Interesting)
You have no idea how that saves your life (or, time - which is really just small chunks of life) when looking for the pronouciation of some kanji characters (and meanings - zaurus in Japan AFAIK comes with dictionaries either direction).
So, yeah - buy a zaurus from Japan and be amazed. I don't think the US models are so trick, buc I might be wrong.
Re:Zaurus is the bomb (Score:3, Informative)
What dictionaries are included? (Score:2)
But does it also do Hebrew or Arabic? (Score:1)
How well does it handle to right to left writing systems, like Hebrew, Arabic, etc?
Wind under thy Wings.
Amber
Re:But does it also do Hebrew or Arabic? (Score:2)
Re:Zaurus is the bomb (Score:1)
I think that the newer japanese clie come with this preinstalled
there is also NEOS GOGOPen for Palm [neoscorp.co.jp] though I have no used it.
How about windows (Score:2, Funny)
Another problem solved.
Java? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Java? (Score:1)
python for palmos & pocketpc (Score:1, Interesting)
I know that's the unintended way to take an ambiguous question (ignoring the fact that python is "versatile" and "powerful" but not really "complex" - although you can certainly build complex tools with it), but this is a serious answer.
WinCE (Score:2)
Beyond that, I really have no idea.
Re:WinCE (Score:1)
Using Unicode/ISO-10646 for internal character representation isn't nearly enough for reasonable i18n, let alone good multilingual support.
You still have to deal with rendering glyphs made from combining characters. You still have to deal with equivalences between such combined characters and precomposed characters. You still have t
Oh for God's sake. . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry to be a bastard about this, but please don't use Ask Slashdot for a simple request that takes two seconds to look up on Google.
The VERY FIRST response on Google is a very complete PowerPoint presentation comparing various plugins for complex language support including Chinese and Japanese, and there were a bunch of useful links from there.
Ask Slashdot should be reserved for important things, like whether Go rulez more than Chess, or endless speculation on who will play the Empire State Building in the new Peter Jackson version of King Kong
------
Re:Oh for God's sake. . . (Score:1)
I thought that was just another one of the 4/1 stories. They were wall-to-wall.
Re:Oh for God's sake. . . (Score:1, Funny)
Of course it does! Any idiot could tell you that, and if you submitted it to Ask Slashdot, plenty of them would!
[ Reply to This ] [goatse.cx]
Re:Oh for God's sake. . . (Score:5, Informative)
For example, a few things I've found:
J-OS works on old Palms, but not anything with enough memory to be useful as a dictionary/learning tool. CJKOS doesn't support High-Res of any type and won't be updated for OS5. So much for a long-term solution. The things I've tried for Palm, while useful, are largely OLD freeware projects that crash a lot on the newer revisions of the OS.
Windows CE machines, while they do support unicode characters natively, need pagecode translation to display more common encodings (I have no experience to draw on... Is this a problem?), and have an abysmal educational software selection.
Point is: I haven't got the PDA/Smartphone to play with, and would like to hear about peoples' experiences fiddling with the language support of their gadgets before dropping a few hundred bucks on something that may not even work very well at all. I'd also be interested to find out which solutions feel like dirty little hacks, and which are virtually indistinguishable from OS-native support...
Re:Oh for God's sake. . . (Score:1)
The people here are using linux on Compaq PDAs (ir equivalants) pretty much exclusively. There are good apps for doing everything you need and that japanese input works fine.
I've not got one myself, so I can't tell you exactly what you need, maybe someone else can enlighten you.
Re:Oh for God's sake. . . (Score:1)
That's the old J-OS. The new J-OS V works with new palms very well. I've got Jim Breen's EJE dictionary and a radical-based kanji dictionary (radic) on my Palm M515 under J-OS V. They work very well. J-OS V permits Japanese input and display in any application. The problems with J-OS V are that it takes 1MB RAM (separate from the fonts) and it costs $55 from palmgear [palmgear.com]
Re:Oh for God's sake. . . (Score:1)
What PDA's/Smartphones, etc. support complex languages in addition to more 'standard' languages?
Would it be easy to add support to a Linux PDA (Zaurus) or Pocket PC for this?
that doesn't indicate you've done any research at all. You didn't post "I have done my research and I'm looking for peoples experiences on the following solutions. .
Point is: You'd have been a lot better off posting what you just did, before yo
Re:Oh for God's sake. . . (Score:1)
Re:Oh for God's sake. . . (Score:2)
>with, and would like to hear about peoples'
>experiences fiddling with the language support of their
>gadgets before dropping a few hundred bucks on
>something that may not even work very well at all.
As far as this goes, you can play with any of the Palm solutions without buying a machine by using the Palm OS Emulator or the Palm OS Simulator for os 5.0 support. I believe if you join their developer program you can play with ROMs for non-Eng
Zaurus SL-5500 (Score:2)
Summary? (Score:1)
So, what are you going to do?
Re:Oh for God's sake. . . (Score:2, Funny)
a simple request that takes two seconds to look up on Google.
A little less, actually.
Re:Oh for God's sake. . . (Score:3, Funny)
No, that's a simple answer too. Yes, go 0wnz chess. Chess is go's lil' bitch to be brought out at SM parties on a leash as a talking point.
graspee
Re:"Ask Google" says nothing (Score:2, Informative)
"japanese language PDA" the first entry is a press release on a whole japanese language system for symbian os.
Google = not hard.
WinCE does this with lots of goodies (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason that I purchased a WinCE device over Palm was because of all the more fun hack potential.
Re:WinCE does this with lots of goodies (Score:1)
Complex Language? (Score:1)
You're one of those people (Score:2)
right-to-left support for palm (Score:2, Informative)
I would be interested to find out if any work has been done to get either of these languages workin on the Zaurus.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Simputer, GTK2, etc (Score:2, Informative)
The "Familiar" Linux distribution for the iPAQ supports gtk2. Relevant links include http://www.handhelds.org [handhelds.org], http://familiar.handhelds.org [handhelds.org], and http://gpe.handhelds.org [handhelds.org]. (Familiar is the base Linux distribution, and GPE is the X-and-Gtk-based GUI on top of that. There's also a Qt-Embedded-based GUI called OPIE; I don't know if that supports Unicode as well, but I would guess it probably does.)
You'd probably need to install your own fonts. Not all models are supported, but the 3800 and 3900 series ar
Re:Simputer, GTK2, etc (Score:2)
I don't know about pda's (Score:2, Informative)
I don't see any reason why pda's or smartphones won't have this kind of language support.
Hm, after a quick search on the palm os site I found this palm os page [palmsource.com]
A quote:
Re:I don't know about pda's (Score:1)
Re:I don't know about pda's (Score:1)
Typo, my bad.
Buy/Import from Japan... (Score:2, Insightful)
Palm has one and so does Zaurus (in fact, they have many models).
Oh and BTW, they are much more cooler than the US models
x11 fonts (Score:1, Interesting)
Try the Danger Hiptop (Score:2, Informative)
japanese zaurus-es are the best way to go (Score:3, Informative)
recent changes? (Score:2)
Re:japanese zaurus-es are the best way to go (Score:3, Funny)
Nokia Communicator (Score:1, Interesting)
Windows CE (Pocket PC) (Score:2)
Re:Windows CE (Pocket PC) (Score:2)
Since 2.11 (the first version I developed for), Windows CE has been fully Unicode, UI and all. It doesn't include multi-language fonts (size constraints), but you can just load regular TrueType fonts.
Now, to be fair, many of the embedded Linux distros are also fully Unicode.
Zaurus-nunome (Score:2)
Get a Zaurus SL-C700 from Japan (Score:4, Informative)
The Sharp SL-C700 is the answer (Score:4, Informative)
www.sofmap.co.jp sells clie and an older sharp zaurus (SL-B500, cheaper and also linux, with a chicklet keyboard). I have some older clies which I dislike due to their being entirely too slow for input using normal input methods. The newer clies are nice-looking too, and at least for the older ones there are apparently ways to localize them. I'd stick with linux and as much RAM as you can get though.. the new zaurus would be perfect with a little faster cpu and an extra hundred megabytes or so of ram. Undoubtedly you can run emacs with any language you like on it.
Welcome to the year 2000 (Score:2, Interesting)
Next time use google instead of wasting space on the front page.
Re:Welcome to the year 2000 (Score:1)
Nearly 130,000 downloads...
And I see for some reason you also fail to mention PalmOS, period. Are the Palm, Handspring, Samsungs and Kyocera PalmOS smartphones not good enough?
Display rendering is very RAM intensive (Score:5, Interesting)
For a 32,000 character Japanese or Chinese font, at 14 pixels square (about the smallest readable resolution), un compressed, you are talking about 800K.
On an 8M Palm, that ends up being 1/10th of your available memory.
Hebrew, Arabic, Tamil, Devengari, or other ligatured languages have much smaller fonts, but since the character rendering changes as a result of which characters are adjavent to each other, or the start or end of the line, you have similar memory constraints for the ligature rendering software, which could be considered "part of" the font.
That's just for display, and doesn't include input.
For something like Pinjin (Chineseh input) or Kanjihand (Japanese input), you are talking additional RAM taken up to allow both "chording", and translation of the pseudo "chords" (unless you have a keyboard) into the textual representation.
Storage for data is less of a problem; but most storage uses EUC or UTF or some other multibyte encoding. If it didn't, you couldn't shove it into 8-bit "files" on a PALM; if PALM supported 16-bit "files", this would be much easier.
But since it doesn't, you don't get the average 2.5:1 information density increase you would normally get from an ideogrammatic language (average English word length is 5 8-bit characters), and it drops down to about equal density (~1.2:1), so you don't win back your memory used on input and display processing that way.
So the net result is about the same as the original Macintosh: all the RAM is taken up by system processing, leaving nothing left for data or programs.
So what this boils down to is that the support has to be built into the OS area, instead of into the user area.
About the only PALM-like device I know that can do this is the Sharp Zarus. All the other vendors tend to fill their FLASH up with, well, pieces of PalmOS, not leaving any private-use areas for language add-on vendors.
PS: Yes, I know my font size of ~800K is uncompressed; the alternative is to compress it, and then include decompression code. That sort of works, but is compute intensive enough to make the system unpleasent to use, with the underpowered processors on most PDAs.
-- Terry
PocketKanji and PAdict (Score:1)
I am the author of PocketKanji and I would like to draw attention to these two projects.
They are aimed at students of japanese who own a PalmOS device. You do not need to have a Japanese device as the applications draw the character themselves.
PocketKanji [juliva.com] will recognize a handwritten character and give you the definition of a kanji.
PAdict [sourceforge.net] will give you the translation of japanese words to english. It has recently included the PocketKanji code so that you can now draw characters you don't know and fi
Zaurus (Score:1)
Right to left languages (Score:2)
Hebrew, btw, is a lot easier than Arabic because only a few letters morph at the ends of words, but it's still a complication we could do without. I guess we could save effort by having a form on the site for registered users to be s
The japanese and taiwanese got PDAs too, y'know... (Score:3, Informative)
They've also got wristwatch computers and use them in ways useful. Mostly 'cause you get a lot more info on that tiny screen with Kanji and Chinese Symbols than with latin lettering. You can get an entire novel on to something like 100 pages that way.
Go figure.
Isn't ENGLISH a complex language? (Score:1)
BTW, I'm using Palm, actually IBM's workpad. It supports Japanes language well and came with english/japanese and japanese/english dictionary. But, it's very small and seems not to fit study purpose.
Palm OS machine sold in Japan has some HW enhance
ment to make input Japanese compfatable. Missing them could make experience painful. I have used old Palm machine sold by US robotics w/o such a enhancement. It was still us
Other lang (Score:1)
I'm surprised no one has picked this nit yet... (Score:1)
japanese is working on the Z (Score:1)
Shameless plug (Score:1)
tkcMail [thekompany.com] does non-latin1 languages.
While theKompany's server is down, here's a (very old) screenshot at my own site. [rikkus.info]
Rik
I just did this with a PocketPC (Score:3, Informative)
Here is the page [brighthand.com]
"It seems that some of you want to see and Input Japanese on their US/EUR PPC
here you are all you need and a Step by step process Enjoy!
Fisrt of all you don't need to flash the rom of your PPC, I was obliged to do that on my Japanese Ipaq just simply coz I was fed up to not be able to run some software properly and to wait for Rom Update.
What you need is very simple:
-The Japanese FONT MSGothic From a Japanese PPC
-A file called wince.nls from a Japanese PPC
-2 reg keys
-TascalRegedit soft in order to import those key.
Please not that you will only be able to read Japanese not Input Japanese
By reading I mean that you can even see the Kanji of a Japanese soft installed on a US/EUR PPC and of course surf the web in Japanese.
By not be able to imput Japanese I mean that you can no write in Japanese for that you need to buy a Japanese Input software and as well import some Key in the registry (can give you more details if you Need)
Finally I am not the guy who created this and all the Info are comming form Pocketgames Japan (Thanks Koji !)
And It has been working perfectly on Compaq/HP (3630 1910 3970 5450) or O2 devices but almost destroyed a Casio E-200 (Hard reset Manipulation was even not successful, was obliged to put away both backup battery and main battery in order to be able to use again the PDA)
so you can Dl the files there:
The reg keys (2)
Reg Key
The Font (2.2Mo zipped and 4Mo unzipped)
Japanese Font
The WinCe.nls
Wince.nls
Thru Active Sync overwrite the wince.nls file which is in your Windows folder, put there as well the Font Don't put neither the wince.nls file nor the font in any other place, folder subfolder than the WINDOWS folder.
Now form TascalRegedit Install the 2 Regkey, soft reset Et voila !!!
to make sure go into my regional settings and you should see that:
Now you can read japanese, so what about inputing Japanese?
This is not the most perfect input methode but this Methode is FREE !
Now you just have to download this soft called POBox, and you will have a New Keyborad available in your PPC. Also in the Zip file you will find a folder called Dic, just put this folder in the C: root of your PPC et voila ! it will works like a charm
(There are some bugs, I mean that the imput panel overlap the dictionary but if you know your Knaji you will recognized them easily)
14/03/03 Update on the Overlaping Problem
Thank you very much for Koji of the Famous and extremly well known Pocketgames JAPAN and Have a look to the link above !
He got the answer of the overlaping problem when using the Soft ComPOBox, you need in the registry to change one single value and you will fix the PB. here you are
in
[HKEY_CURRENT_USERControlPanelSip]
You have
MenuBarHight 0000001a
So now change it to
00000000
Enjoy"
Re: (Score:2)
Palm OS Arabic (Score:1)
PocketPC and PalmOS can already do this (Score:1)
Re:english rocks (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:english rocks (Score:2)
Ass!
Re:english rocks (Score:2)
I use several different OSs. I have yet to find anything that Windows does better over the long haul. Over the next couple of years it will even loose it's current edge in gaming.
Then again that's puerly my opinion. Maintain and support your own, even if I happen to think they are wrong.
On topic, OpenZaurus, on top of either th 5500 or the 5600 supports all of Debian. This means that you can insta
Re:english rocks --- yeah but (Score:2, Funny)
repeat after me...
colour
armour
catalogue
Aluminium (Al - you - min - i - um)
Simon
dont get on your high horses this is called humour
Re:english rocks --- yeah but (Score:1)
-uso.
Uses a bizarre mixture of American and British spelling.
Re:Excuse me? (Score:1)
Re:Excuse me? (Score:1)