East Asian language support in OS X?

Hello,
I am seriously considering of switching from PC to Apple. I have a very important question though: I work with Japanese language and need to use the East Asian language support that Windows provides. Is there anything similar in OS X? This is a really important think to me. Thank you.

btw. by support, I don't just mean the fonts, but the whole keyboard + IME - writing characters and their recognition. All this is part of Windows East Asian support and works great for me.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/mic...-qs-concern-about-switching-back-windows.html

Someone with exact opposite question, so I guess the answer is yes.

 

never used it.. but its supposed to support it well... heck they demoed people writing in kanji with their fingers on the trackpad.

 

thanks guys...I still hope that someone with direct experience can verify how Japanese works in OS X..very very important to me

 

well according to the Japanese Apple Store ( Apple Store????? - Apple Store (Japan)) they have Japanese keyboards.

This link look a little dated... but talks through some of the things you might want to know, though it might be improved in current versions of OSX.
Christopher Bolton's Japanese for Your Mac

 

Im pretty sure apple has good support for Japanese considering, China, Japan, Korea are the bigger asian markets for apple.

 

Yeah, I think you must be right about that. Apple even offers a Japanee keyboard on the U.S. website. Still I hoped to hear from someone who uses just to have peace of mind.

 

So I might have found out that there is one function that OS X doesn't have and Windows do. If that's really true that i am in real trouble (for I have already purchased my Mac and I do need to use that function for my research). In Windows, when you switch to Japanase keyboard you have a possibility of using "IME Pad" - a little window where you draw with your mouse a Japanese character. As one draws one stroke after another you have a various kanji appear that you can select from..eventually you find the one you're looking for. Extremely easy to use and for those who understand something about East Asian languages (i.e. Chinese and Japanese), you will immediately recognize the extreme usefulness of this tool (i.e. no need to look up kanji by the number of strokes or radicals etc.). It basically works like this here:
Handwritten kanji search at sljfaq.org
(this requires web access though and is cumbersome to use compared to Windows).
Now I have heard that such function does not exist in OS X.
If so I am quite doomed or will have to probably have to use Windows on my OS X more often than I intended to .

 

LOL I tried using the stroke method to input Chinese, but I epic failed. I have to use pinyin to input Chinese.

Not sure if Kanji has a romanization system though.

 

then I am really screwed. I can input Japanese characters in hiragana - that's something which Macs have, no problem. The issue is that when there's a character I don't know the meaning of(or it's reading) I can't easily look it up if Macs don't have anything similar to Windows IME Pad. I still hope someone will tell me there's this function. It's so basic and essential in terms of supporting East Asian languages...I really hope someone will tell me it's possible.

 

I'm in the same boat with Chinese. I can only type what I know. I can look up an english word, get the Chinese phonetic, and enter it in pinyin. But, if I see a character I don't recognize, and its on a graphic, I can't look it up most of the time. I am learning the radicals though and that's been helpful.

Just curious, does Japanese have something like the Kangxi dictionary?

 

what is knagxi dictionary? Sorry I don't know it.
Well this is a major drawback then of OS X. I am now starting to be worried about this...you know XP or WM7 is wonderful in this regards. You can switch convert hiragana (kanji, katakana) into Kanji - back an forth - so easily. just write it out (like you would with pinyin) and then press space bar..you get all the options to choose from. Extremely fast. And if you don't know a kanji, you can draw it with your mouse in IME Pad.
NOW IT SEEMS THAT DOING ALL THIS ON MAC IS WAY MORE COMPLICATED AND LESS COMFORTABLE. IF THAT'S THE CASE I MIGHT REALLY REGRET SWITCHING TO MACS. For I assumed (given that OS X is offered in Japanese too) that this is something Macs will have taken care of.

 

Kangxi dictionary was a Chinese dictionary written in the 17th century, still considered the best in the world, done all in Chinese.

There must be solutions out there. You said yourself, Macs are used a lot in Japan, surely some Japanese developers created solutions. Try googling google.jp for Japanese IME's.

 

yeah i've been doing it...i mean I could use an on-line interface for that such as:
Handwritten kanji search at sljfaq.org
But that's not convenient at all.
I've tried googling this stuff but can't find a solution. I mean Iwill have a way to work around it, but it's not as convenient..i.e.it won't be possible to live with this, but my life will become way more inconvenient for I type virtually everyday in Japanese.

 

Well, I wasn't refering to an online interface. I was thinking more along the lines of an application. For Chinese, Windows uses a clumsy pinyin-based IME. Apparently they did not like drawing strokes, so in China they developed their own keyboard-based IME called WuBi. You type in a code, and a selection of characters appears. you pick the character you need. I've seen Chinese type almost as fast as we type our characters.

 

I see. Lordqarlyn, I think though I have found a solution. In fact, Apple is,fortunately, one step ahead of us. It seems that the new Macs (which will be my case, arriving in a few days) offer the following:

YouTube - Episode 2: How To Enable Trackpad Handwriting In Snow Leopard
YouTube - Chinese Trackpad Handwriting



So if you have a multi-touch MBP you should be totally fine. This software looks good to me - I mean comparing to the Windows IME Pad it's fancier but not necessarily better (the WM offers you to backtrack your strokes, choose from a greater variety, etc. the interface is not graphically as cool but has more functions). Still overall it's good.
Actually I should say it's good for Chinese speakers as there are Japanese kanji which are different but it's better than nothing.　

 

Well im not sure if 10.5 has this but i type kanji just fine using hiragana/katakana.

 

ooops double post

 

I've been told Kanji and Chinese are very similar, but not identical. Japanese visitors to China can get around and read the signs, even glimmer from books and newspapers.

I'm glad you found something though, I figure there had to be a solution out there...

 

Does anyone know if Microsoft sells a chinese version of Mac office 2008? By chinese version i mean the user interface and menu are in chinese. I know I can type in Chinese in any version, but I want localized menu system and toolboxes.
Thanks!