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

[Daniel E. Moctezuma]

Hello Frederick

You can enter your search string in Japanese (kanji & kana) or English (not
romaji). I used Kiten starting from 1.2 so I'm not sure when this feature
got removed.

I use a US-English keyboard too and I can type actual Japanese characters.
In Fedora (I use F18 in Japanese) you can use either ibus-anthy or
ibus-mozc (recomended) for your input method in Japanese.

Deinflection is available by default, there is no need to turn it on/off.
Let's say you search for the verb 食べました or 食べた ("to eat" in Japanese),
Kiten deinflects that verb to obtain the dictionary-form, and then do the
actual search for the dictionary-form verb.
This should work with both verbs and -i adjectives (please see page 11 of
the handbook for an screenshot of this).
It can be quite common for beginners in the Japanese language to try to
search for words they don't understand by just copy-pasting, or maybe a
person doesn't still know all the verb tenses in Japanese. This feature
aims to help you with that.

Overall, I agree the handbook can be improved to clarify there is currently
no romaji support and suggest to install a Japanese IME.
And to be honest, typing in romaji doesn't help you learning Japanese so I
would really recommend you to avoid it as much as possible.
Where I think it could be useful is when you temporarily use a computer
(other than yours) which doesn't need a Japanese IME. But even that, I
personally think using romaji slows down your learning in the Japanese
writing.
It's a very easy language, give kanji & kana a try ;-)

By the way, Google Translate let's you write Japanese characters without a
Japanese IME, but they actually integrated their own IME already available
for PCs (based from Mozc mentioned previously as ibus-mozc).

I hope this clarify your doubts, let us know if this helps you.
And of course, I'm open to discussions as well.

P. S.: please CC'me as I'm not subscribed to this list.

-- 
Daniel E. Moctezuma
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