CJKV Information Processing, 2nd Edition

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Chapter 5: Input Methods

the documentation for transliteration tables, similar to those just shown, that specify oth-

er special key combinations that can be used.

ere are additional kana characters that require special transliteration techniques for in-

put, which are are illustrated in Table 5-5. ey are expressed in katakana because they are

typically used for transliterating loan words, such as foreign places, names, and words.

Keystrokes to produce special katakana sequencesTable 5-5.

Katakana Latin keystrokes



FA



FI



FE



FO



VA



VI



VU



VE



VO

Japanese long vowels, while transliterated using macroned vowels, are input according to

the reading of the kana used to express them. For example,  (ō) is entered using the

two keystrokes “ou,” not “oo.”

Writing a Latin-to-kana conversion routine is not terribly dicult. Sometimes the au-

thors of Japanese text-processing programs encourage others to use their routines, and

most Japanese input methods that are freely available come with source code that includes

conversion tables. As an example, a Perl version of a Latin-to-kana conversion library

called romkan.pl is available. It requires the Perl library le called jcode.pl to function.

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Hangul Versus Transliterated Input

Like bopomofo and kana, each hangul—whether it is composed of multiple or a single ja-

mo—can be represented by equivalent Latin characters. ere appears to be ...