Hello everybody, newbie here.

Much of my work is related to Japan and I write a lot of Japanese too and I want to write and read Japanese on my N900 properly. I've searched the message board for threads about Japanese input but so far I haven't found a solution that would be simple enough to use and install.

Is someone working on a proper CJK input system for the N900 or is it already available somewhere? Open source and proprietary are both fine, I might even be willing to pay a little if the software is good enough.

If possible, I'd like system that will only need an install and then I can start using it, preferably in the actual maemo interface without an external program and no tricks with the terminal.

The initial lack of support for CJK input almost made me buy an iPhone but since the N900 is a Linux phone I figured a proper CJK will pop up sooner or later.

Also, the default Japanese font isn't very good. It works mostly but some characters are a bit off. Here is an example screenshot, the heading should be 直流 so the first character is displayed incorrectly:



All comments and suggestions warmly welcome!

I installed MSCIM from extra-devel and it has MSCIM-googlepinyin. I think that should have japanese too. You press Ctrl-Space to switch between English and Foreign. It works.

And there is anthy, a Jap input method.

bun

Post a screenshot of what it's supposed to look like?

Here is your pictures, enjoy.

bun

Ok, so here is how N900 shows the webpage:


And here is what it should look like...


See the difference?? The first character in the heading is clearly wrong.

I tried Anthy and MSCIM but I couldn't get them to work because I couldn't find any instructions on how to use them. Any tips?

Also, right now these programs are in the Extras-Devel repository. When will they be published completely for us mere mortals?

Nah, it's the same symbol all right, the font is just a bit weird. I've gotten so used to it I didn't even notice your point first =P

Anyway, change the browser font and you should be all right

Is it using a chinese font perhaps?

Actually, the 1st version is the correct way to write the symbol in writing Chinese character.
The 2nd version is only used in printing, not sure if that's the case in Japanese though.
Both are the same character btw, and since Chinese, Japanese and Korean are now sharing the characters in unicode, so it's more like which font is used to display, some might be more Chinese friendly, some might be more Japanese friendly.

I don't know which East Asian language you are familiar with but this is non-standard Japanese, even if the character originates from the same stem in Chinese. How can I change the system font? I want something that will show my Japanese messages and websites correctly.

Japanese support in the N900 is really awful. But to tell the truth, the same font/typeface problem happens on Linux desktop - I also see many "wrong" kanjis using Ubuntu.

I can solve this on Ubuntu by changing the font being used (some can display the correct characters), but it seems there is no "correct font" installed on the N900.

The helpful link below will render a character using all fonts installed in your computer (including the N900). Copy a kanji like 直, 刃 or 謁 and paste it to see if you have a font on your system that displays it as it should: http://www.fileformat.info/info/unic...t/fontlist.htm

How 直 should look like
How 刃 should look like
How 謁 should look like

You can follow the HOWTO: Installing Japanese that looks nice on Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) guide to see how you can fix some problems and how to obtain the free Microsoft fonts MSGothic and MSMincho. I just copied the TTF files to the ~/.fonts directory of my N900 and voila': now I have the "right" kanji characters!

Unfortunately, I still can't enter Japanese directly on my phone - anthy worked for a short while and stopped working for no apparent reason. I tried everything I could but it just refused to work again... well, I might try something else later...