Solved Japanese input on 12.2? (mutt, vim)

meine

meine

Hi,

Making typing errors in mail/mutt I discovered that you can compose Japanese characters, both hiragana and katakana. This is on a FreeBSD 12.2 RELEASE, with only basis install (so no specific Japanese things).

m<backspace>e produces hiragana me め

M<backspace>e produces katakana me メ

I can't find out how to make single hiragana/katakana like a e i u o

My question is if there is documentation how this works on FreeBSD? Or someone from Japan who can describe it, using a regular romanji keyboard.

[edit] I found an internet page describing the Language input keys, but it is not specific on our beloved OS.

[edit2] To add complexity: this way of composing only works in mail/mutt but not in editors/vim, which is also the editor used in mutt. Localization is set in .profile `LANG=nl_NL.UTF-8; export LANG MM_CHARSET=UTF-8; export MM_CHARSET`

TIA,
 
meine said:
I can't find out how to make single hiragana/katakana like a e i u o
Click to expand...
I'm only slightly familiar with the Japanese language but Japanese is a syllable based language, there are no 'single' letter characters. They're all combinations that end with a 'a e i u o' sound.
 
SirDice said:
I'm only slightly familiar with the Japanese language but Japanese is a syllable based language, there are no 'single' letter characters. They're all combinations that end with a 'a e i u o' sound.
Click to expand...
Most characters are a combination of a consonant and a vowel, but both writing systems also have loose vowels -- see https://cotoacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Hiragana.png

As in my question, the combinations of a consonant and vowel can be composed, but I couldn't figure out the loose vowels. `i<backspace><space>` should IMHO be logical, but produces just a space.

Trying random combinations also showed a lot more characters, also stars, and some that looked like Korean. For example `i<backspace>a` produces a character that is not katakana or hiragana and can't be pasted in my GUI browser...

I hoped that somewhere it is documented...
 
meine said:
Making typing errors in mail/mutt I discovered that you can compose Japanese characters, both hiragana and katakana. This is on a FreeBSD 12.2 RELEASE, with only basis install (so no specific Japanese things).
Click to expand...
I posted my question also in the mutt mailing list and got the answer:

In my vimrc file I have a setting to use digraphs, but only when composing an email in mail/mutt -- that is why it didn't pop up when just using editors/vim.

Code: 
" handle mutt mail replies better
autocmd BufNewFile,BufRead /tmp/mutt* set noautoindent filetype=mail wm=0 tw=78      nonumber digraph nolist
autocmd BufNewFile,BufRead ~/tmp/mutt* set noautoindent filetype=mail wm=0 tw=78     nonumber digraph nolist

`digraphs` is vimmish for composing non standard characters and can be made with `<character> <backspace> <second character>` (didn't know it, should have RTFM...). Because I started to use <AltG><key> to make accented European characters, I forgot about the digraphs and the possible application for a lot more characters, including Kana.

For reference, here is the complete list of digraphs in editors/vim: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/digraph.html#digraph.txt

* If it isn't a bug, nor a feature, then it must be a setting
* Making mistakes helps learning new things
-- I'd like to make more mistakes in future ;-)

Thanks all for replying![/port]
 
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