It's about time someone did this. I've been working on a Japanese wapuro for my 83, but there just isn't enough memory to do it. Congrats, Ben. You've done a great job. By the way, if you need any Kanji fonts, send me an email. I've got a couple really nice 16x16 that should work.

If this program was like the basic version, i thought the keystrokes would be the same. However, there is no access for the hiragana "a", nor the "ya" "yu" "yo" "wa" "wo" "n'" characters in either hiragana or katakana. Secondly, no small characters are accessable, such as "hyaku", there is no little "ya".

Yet, on a lighter note, it is a great program, and truly a first. Keep up the good work.

Agt Alpha

Sorry all of the charactors are not in there yet. I am still working on it. Most of the letters are in japlib I just haven't figured out how I should do the rest of the button configuration.

I have one suggestion to make the character input routine easier:
Have it work like a standard Japanese word proccesor does in windows, in other words to get the letter ‚È you would just type "na" on the keyboard, so you would need to use a key capture routine of some sort. The only letter I can see aproblem with would be "n" as it's the only separate consonant available, but you could just have the user press "enter" of they want n, and not say na.
For three sound letters like ‚Â, "tsu" (of course you could allways cheat, and have it entered as tu) the routine would still work if it waited if there was a consonant after another consonant.
So to sum it all up the routine would wait for a keypress, and then:
vowel:type character
consonant:look up all consonant possibilities, and wait for identifying vowel, loop untill vowel is recieved, and print the necesary character.
IMHO that wuld be the best way of approaching Japanese typing on the calc, and you wouldn't have to remember which button was what. That would also free up some buttons, allowing you to use "APPS" to change Hiragana / Katakana, and would allow you to put in all the letters that you need.

TI-86? That would be really nice!!!

HMMMM 68k and z80....two different CHIPS! YOU KNOW HOW HARD THAT WOULD BE TO PORT!?!?!? I HATE PORT ASKERS!

Sorry. I don't know the z80 (is it z80?) language. If someone wanted to try to port it I would be glad to give the information to one person.

What is the difference between z80 and 68k. I figured if you can write in one language, then you can write in the other after some studying. It can't be that hard.

I can tell you haven't programmed in assembly.

no, he's right. I learned 68k in about a day after knowing z80.
and to the moron above who hates porters: the different processors isn't the problem in a port of this kind. the 86 has built-in alt font handling (possibly the 89 too, yet to be discovered), so it would only be a matter of copying the sprite data into an 86 program. it might be another thing converting to the ti-86 font size; I'm not sure what size font this jap write prog uses.

Ok dux...you make a lot of cool stuff but i'd like to see you *port* this to the 86 if it isn't real hard. ;P

I didn't say it would be easy, just that the difference in processors is not at issue in porting graphics .. but it would be very easy _if_ japwrite used 8x6 fonts.

watashi wa koko de yon-nen nihongo benkyo shimashita. watashi wa ti-83 de Japwrite tsuki desu. (I studied Japanese for four years at my hs. I would like Japwrite for the ti-83)

Isn't it suki desu? Boku wa nihongo o hasuru.(screw polite forms)

Good Japanese, but it's "suki" not "tsuki." "Tsuki" means moon. :)

On another note, a translation program would be great. Although, creating an accurate method of translation could be tough. I made a Japanese dictionary program in basic and could probably port it to asm. That would be another good program to have.

Greg Sharp

The Japanese language contains over 25,000 characters!! How could a program possibly contain that much information?? I don't know, it seems like a cheap imitation to me!!

That's the point: you see you just don't know.
It seems to me that you're just repeating what you heard, without actually doing any checking on it. Yes it's true that there are a lot of kanji characters, but that is not the only alphabet available, and this program doesn't even do kanji yet. It does Hiragana / Katakana which are phoenetic alphabets, and have about forty letters each. Furthermore you would only need the 2000 or so "common" Kanji in this program anyway, so it is not as impossible as you think.
Remember this saying: No one knows how little you know untill you open your mouth.

neat. had the 82 had the space requirements I would have made a similar program for it awhile ago. I would also suggest the method for input as in the computer program JWP, that is pressing 'n' then 'a' yields na, so on and so forth. If you would like someone to port it to the 82, im more than qualified (FFX4, Dying Eyes, etc..). 86 o motteinai ga asobitai n da.

an 82/83 port would be great! This is the kind of program that people should be able to ask about ports. Anyway, I don't know much japanese (what little I know was gleaned from watching anime) but I have the feeling that this can be used as an eduacational tool. All you have to do is make a 'flash card' type program; display a character and when the user presses a key the romanisation (sp?) is displayed under the character... and so on and so forth. Wow.. more Ideas coming to me.. I'll have to think them out....

-AGiES-

About the phonetic alphebet... is this used as often as it seems to be from what i read on this board? I mean, chinese has a phonetic alphabet too, and my parents never learned it in HK, and they were born there. And i guess i couldn't find a good use for this for myself, even if it did translate, cuz i don't think most JP games (playstation) use the phonetic. Anyway, its a different program than the rest...

(i'm listening to the ending music to Final Fantasy 8, a great JP game, too bad i can't read JP, hehe, gotta wait till sept for this game)

yeoua

I have been thinking about making a library or TSR that would allow an IME or other form of input. If this library (or program) were to be created, then the fonts would be contained in a separate library, like they currently are. The input method I was thinking about is the one used in JWP (and JWPce), however, if there is enough demand, I might consider an IME similar to Microsoft's (MSIME or the Global IME). If kanji were to be implemented, I believe a small subset only would be used. This is because the translation from kana to kanji takes memory, too. The bushu/ radical idea is also very valid if kanji (and probably only kanji) were to be used. I would appreciate any ideas on this, either posted, or preferably e-mailed (address at top).

Agt Alpha

P.S. I believe that Benjamin did an excellent job with the font, however, a smaller font may be better (i.e. 12x12). If anyone is interested in a 12x12 font I can get one, with kana and kanji. Also, if small kana and punctuation are to be used in a word processing program of some sort, then I would like it to be known that different fonts have to be used for horizontal and veritcal writing (small kana, punctuation, and long marks for katakana).