How the Japanese Communicate: Alphabet

This is a short primer about the way Japanese people communicate with each other with writing. It won't teach you how to read, write or speak Japanese but it should hopefully be enlightening for people with no previous knowledge. Let’s kick off by looking at the alphabets (yes, plural) that Japanese people use. Just a … Continue reading How the Japanese Communicate: Alphabet →

How to Show Japanese Text in Evince

A quick tip that might help others (or me, the next time I forget)… I found that Evince, Ubuntu’s default PDF viewer, doesn’t display Japanese characters, at least on my non-Japanese system. After a quick search it seems the answer is nice and simple – install the poppler-data package. So, either use the Synaptic Package Manager or … Continue reading How to Show Japanese Text in Evince →

The HTML5 <ruby> element in words of one syllable or less

Opera colleague Bruce Lawson thought it might be spiffing if the description of the <ruby> element that appears in the HTML5 spec was clarified a bit, so here’s my attempt. I’m using Japanese as an example although it applies to Chinese and possibly other languages as well. Please note my definition of one syllable may differ from yours. Step 1: The Japanese … Continue reading The HTML5 <ruby> element in words of one syllable or less →

How to input Japanese in Opera on Linux

UPDATE: As of 2010, Ubuntu and Fedora both use iBus and I must say this is a great addition to the IME landscape. This is my new recommendation. Like many Linux users I’ve never really had much luck with SCIM and Opera but I’m pleased to say I’ve finally found a solution: use UIM. I’ve … Continue reading How to input Japanese in Opera on Linux →