[kde-doc-english] Fwd: Kiten 1.3 in Fedora 18: How to enter search items in kana, how to turn verb deinflection on/off?

[Burkhard Lück]

Hi David,

we got these questions on the mailing list.

Please help to answer them.

Thanks.

----------  Weitergeleitete Nachricht  ----------

Betreff: [kde-doc-english] Kiten 1.3 in Fedora 18: How to enter search items in 
kana, how to turn verb deinflection on/off?
Datum: Donnerstag, 21. März 2013, 22:39:51
Von: Frederick Hawes <fred.hawes at gmail.com>
An: kde-doc-english at kde.org

Hi,

I have just recently loaded Fedora 18 onto my computer, after several years
of using Fedora 4.

I used the version of Kiten that was in Fedora 4 quite a lot, while trying
to learn Japanese, and found  it
quite useful, so I was looking forward to using the new Kiten.

However, the documentation doesn't answer some of the questions I have
about how to get results from it.

In the old version of Kiten, it was possible to toggle the text entry mode
between English words
and Kana by hitting Shift-Space (and you could find this in the
documentation, too!).
Then, when in the Kana mode, the user could type in the syllables of the
search word phonetically,
basically in romaji, and as each Japanese syllable was completed, the roman
letters would be replaced
by the Kana.  Normally the replacement would be hiragana, but if the romaji
phonetic spelling was in capital letters,
the replacement would be in katakana.  It was easy to learn how to use
this, and this feature was super-useful,
because otherwise there would be no practical way to enter a Japanese
search string at all!

Also, I never entered kanji to search on directly, because with my totally
US-English keyboard there was no way,
except maybe to look all through the entire font with the previewer
application.
However, it was easy to find the entries for kanji, either by clicking
directly on the kanji after it showed up
in the search results, or by using the radical search window.

Now, however, with the new Kiten, Shift-Space no longer gets me into the
phonetic-romaji-getting-replaced-by-kana
mode, it just puts a space into the search line and leaves me typing in
English.
Also, nowhere in the documentation is there any explanation how to change
the search entry mode.
The documentation says "You can enter Kanji, Kana and English and get back
results from Kiten,"
but doesn't explain how to make this happen.

(1) How do we input Kana into the search window?  And (2) Please put some
information about this into the Kiten Handbook.

Also, in the section on Verb Deinflection, the documentation explains what
the "Deinflect" option can do,
and how it can be useful, but doesn't ever say how to turn this option on
or off.  I looked through all the
Search menus, looked at all the configurable items under the Settings menu,
and couldn't find anything
about this.

In the old Kiten in Fedora 4, there was some discussion in the Handbook
about putting a dot
in the search string, but I didn't quite understand how to make that work.
Also, the example image
in the new documentation doesn't show any dot in the search string, so
apparently that's not how
to control the deinflection capability.

So, (3) How does the user turn the "Deinflect" option on and off?  And (4)
Could you please put something
explaining this into the documentation?

(Actually, until I can figure out how to enter Japanese search strings at
all, those last questions are purely academic,
because I can't deinflect what I can't even type in.)

Can you please advise me (and all the future readers of your documentation
too) on how to get to the Kana entry mode,
and how to control the deinflection capability?

Except for these issues, I've really liked using the old Kiten, and have
high hopes to get a lot out of the new one.

Thanks,

Regards,
Fred Hawes
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-- 
Burkhard Lück