The Kanji Sketch Pad - Part Four, The Text Editor

The Text Editor created for the Kanji Sketch Pad has been specially prepared for beginners who are not yet familiar with existing input method editors (IMEs), or don't yet have enough knowledge of kanji pronunciations to access the characters when writing study notes. It is also designed to allow easy switching between English and Japanese within a sentence, and even advanced users may find it easier than a normal IME in some settings.

It is recommended that you open the Mnemonic Window, search for the item '一 one', and then press the pen symbol prior to reading further. That way, you can try out the techniques below as you read along. Note that the background changes to white and a cursor appears when the mnemonic is open for editing. You don't need to close or save the text when you are done - just close the mnemonic window.

You can enter any kanji by typing its keyword encased in square brackets. For instance, type [right] to enter 右 , the kanji for 'right'. Enter [1] or [one] for 一 and so on. If you change the keyword in your vocab list, your new keyword will acquire the same magic ability. If you enter a keyword that is not on your private list, but is in the main joyokanji reference list, it will also let you refer to kanji in your study notes even before you have learned their readings. To enter compounds, just keep typing, with the next square bracket straight after the last kanji. So you can type [fire][mountain] to get 火山 , which you might guess is the compound for volcano, even before you learn it is pronounced **

Entering hiragana and katakana uses a somewhat different method. For hiragana, type a backslash followed by the pronunciation (romaji) of the character, and then a space. As you type the space, the romaji will be replaced by hiragana and the space will disapear. For instance, typing \a leads to the appearance of あ , or you can type \hi for ひ and so on. Once you are in hiragana mode, subsequent characters do not need the backslash. To type みず (mizu), for instance, which is one pronunciation of 水 (meaning 'water'), just type \mi zu , complete with a space after mi and another after zu. What you will see, as you type, is the following:
\
\m
\mi

みz
みzu
みず

You can easily mix kanji and hiragana in the same word. The editor assumes that any roman characters typed in the same word as kanji characters (appearing after the kanji, but outside the square brackets) are intended as romaji shortcuts for hiragana, so the backslash is not needed. If you want to mix kanji and katakana, though, you will need to indicate this by typing an upright before the katakana. All kanji go in square brackets, wherever they appear in the word, whether before or after kana.

For the special small versions of some hiragana and katakana, enter a dot (fullstop, period) before the romaji. For instance, small っ is entered as \.tsu, and large つ as \tsu. As usual, the conversion to hiragana is triggered by a space at the end of the individual syllable character.

The text editor is also hyperlink-aware, so if you type or paste an address starting with http, following it with a space, it will turn into a clickable link. If you in editing mode, you will need to indicate that you want to follow the link by holding the control key.

Next Section: Part Five, Learning Targets section.

Index
Part One - Overview
Part Two - The Main Buttons
Part Three - The Mnemonic Buttons
Part Four - The Text Editor
Part Five - The Pad's Hot Zones
Part Six - Learning Targets
Part Seven - Usage and Readings