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bomb tech
25th October 2000, 21:53
Hello,

I took a couple of years of Japanese in college but that was way back in 1992-1993. I'm looking for the best Japanese language program for my home computer to help me regain lost skills and continue on in the language.

Thanks,

Don

Anders Pettersson
25th October 2000, 23:18
Hi Don.

If a software to write Japanese on a western language versin of Windows is what you are looking for, I can recomend the JWPce. It is Freeware and you can find it at: http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/japanese.html

It is quite good, got a kanji radical lookup, dictionary etc. It can also help you with converting to most japanese codeing sustems.

If you are looking for some learning program you can find som Kani Flash card program at the same site.

/Anders
<A href="http://www.shorinji-kempo.org">www.shorinji-kempo.org</A>

kabutoki
27th October 2000, 15:02
You might also want to check NJwin and NjStar to write japanese and to read japanese WWW sites.
JWP is a very good advice. I´m working with it 3 years now.

Karsten

Richard A Tolson
29th October 2000, 21:19
Anders,
Thanks for the info about JWPce. I have been using JWP.exe for a while now. I just downloaded the JWPce a few days ago and am quite impressed with how it works.
Thanks again!!!

Adam DArcy
30th October 2000, 15:51
Hello Don,

There are many programs out there, but i still continue to direct people to http://www.mangajin.com . They do crtiques of software all the time, and provide contact information for the various developers.

For writing and reading Japanese on an English or other non-Japanese platform, if you don't mind our friends at Microsoft, I would recommend simply downloading IME from the updates download page that MS provides with Windows 98 and above. I think the URL is http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/
You can download two things here that will help you read japanese on the web, and type Japanese into emails and even English MS Word. It gets kind of tricky, though, as you never really know if your email will be readable once you send it :-( . Also, you need a specific printer driver when printing characters that you type into English MS Word. I have a Xerox laster printer, and it will not print Japanese. However, once i installed the Hewlett Packard equivalent (or mirror??) driver, the Japanese characters printed beautifully. Again, this only seems to apply to laser printers. Most inkjets (HP, Canon, Epson, Lexmark) seem to print Kanji with no problem.

Seem confusing? It has been for me. I've just recently began to understand what the heck it is i have to do to print Japanese, and send email that is legible to my Japanese friends and family. The upside is that all of this was FREE. I tried Kanji Kit, but was not impressed with the functionality or the price.

Hope this helps!

Adam