Japanese kanji handwriting recognition in Windows XP’s IME
Did you know that in Windows XP’s IME we can input a kanji by drawing it? (Does Ubuntu, and Linux in general, have it?) I will outlay the steps here.
Obviously you need to have the IME installed. See this Wikibook page. For illustration, we’ll use Notepad. So fire up Notepad, switch the IME on, and input any character on the keyboard. I use ‘a’, which the IME will convert to hiragana ‘あ’ on the fly:
The magic key is ‘F5′, which will launch the IME pad. Press it and you’ll get this:
Press “OK” and you’ll get this:
On the screen pictured above, you can find a kanji by its radical (部首, bushu). However that’s not what we’re interested in right now. To input by drawing, click the top-leftmost button (circled red). You’ll get this:
Here’s the explanation for the UI elements:
- This is the drawing area. You draw the strokes here by holding the left mouse button and dragging.
- Matching shapes (and not-so-matching shapes) you draw in (1) will be listed here. If you’ve found the kanji you want, just click it.
- 戻す (modosu) means “to return”. Click this to undo the last stroke.
- 消去 (shoukyo) means “erasing”. Click this to clear the drawing area.
One thing to note is that stroke order matters! Try to draw a perfectly matching shape but with a random stroke order, and chances are the program will not give the kanji you want.
The power of this tool cannot be underestimated. For one thing, it allows you to quickly find a printed character you see. Suppose you went to a mini market and see a notice written in Japanese (for example, in Circle K Terban, Yogyakarta). If there is an unknown kanji there, you won’t have any information other than its shape. Finding the kanji through the method explained above will be very easy. After you have the digital form of the character, you can find its readings, compounds, and meanings in electronic dictionaries.
Second, you can use it to input rare kanji easily. Suppose for some insane reason you want to write “koe” (sound) using the rare kanji 聲 instead of the normal 声 (see for example “Endless Rain” by X Japan). You know its sound (no pun intended), but you can’t find it by typing in the IME because that kanji is archaic (even EDICT don’t list it). However, by drawing it you can find the kanji.
The third is for writing names. When IME don’t recognize a name, you can input it by drawing character per character.
April 2nd, 2007 at 10:19 pm
May I butt into discussion Bro… ( terjemahan ngawur dari stardict : Numpang nimbrung nih Mas… )
Omoshiroi desu ne…
But…
Printed character? But, how could we know the stroke order?
.
Second, have u seen “Densha Otoko”? That movie tell us about a man who chat using ( a kind of ) chatting application, and when he’s ( the main actor ) typing, a pop up appears, tell him “all possible kanji”. Sounds cool, huh?
April 3rd, 2007 at 11:16 am
>> But, how could we know the stroke order?
Well, the only option is to know the stroke order of the constituent shapes :).
In my current stage, almost all of the new kanji I find is made from shapes I already know. For example, the complex kanji 鑑 (kagami, pattern) is composed of 金, 臣, 牛 (minus the last vertical stroke), and 皿. If you follow the stroke order of the simple shapes, the stroke order for the complex kanji will probably be right.
The last measure is to try to guess it and hope that it will appear on the kanji list :).
>> Second, have u seen “Densha Otoko”
I’ve read some first chapters of the manga but never seen the movie. If I get the chance to watch it, I’ll look out for the scene you described
April 4th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
excuse me, can you tell me about the mean of Hanichi Kudou? Thank you
April 4th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
>> can you tell me about the mean of Hanichi Kudou?
Well, it depends on what kanji you use to write “Hanichi Kudou”. For example, we can write Kudou as 工東, 工藤, 工道, and many other possibilites, each with different meanings…
April 4th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
There’s also simliar thing for Linux and Ubuntu. For example Tomoe and Kanjipad. http://www.h4.dion.ne.jp/~apricots/scim-anthy/howto.html
June 10th, 2007 at 11:40 am
I can’t find the handwriting option. I have “Character List”, “Soft Keyboard”, “Strokes” and “Radical” on left side of IME Pad, but no handwriting option. The help files mention the tool but it’s simply not there.
June 10th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
@Myria
I have also seen what you described on Windows XP x64. Perhaps Microsoft haven’t finished porting that functionality in time and just disabled it.
June 6th, 2008 at 10:16 am
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