I've been studying Japanese for the last year and a half and made some Japanese friends in the process. I was telling one of them about my keyboard collection and Japanese IMEs for Linux when I remembered something about an attempt at a native kana/kanji layout back in the 1980s or maybe 90s, not a layered layout like most use now.
I _think_ it was made by a Japanese or maybe a Korean company and was a flop. The machine had an immense keyboard IIRC. I cannot remember the name of the machine or company or even if I'm making this whole thing up. Does anyone else recall such a machine or am I going crazy? Wait, don't answer that last part!
80s era kanji keyboard?
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stoddartc1
- Location: Canada
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Probably not what you're referring to, but this post reminded me of this: http://xahlee.info/kbd/chinese_drum_keyboard.html
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Slom
- Location: land of the rusty beamsprings
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Findecanor
- Location: Stockholm, Sweden
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Xah Lee's web site shows a couple Kana and Kanji keyboards.
http://xahlee.info/kbd/alps_kanji_keyboard.html
http://xahlee.info/kbd/sanyo_medicom_keyboard.html
The history of Kana input (with conversion to Kanji) is pretty varied also:
The web site for the Esrille Nisse ergonomic keyboard describes several old layouts that the keyboard supports.
There is an article in the Wiki about the M-Shiki layout used on NEC PC-8801 series computers.
There was also a logical Hiragana layout on the MSX platform that I haven't seen elsewhere.
I found this article: Word Processing for the Japanese Language that talks about the Toshiba JW-10, developed in the 1970s. It seems that the JIS layout had been based on its keyboard but I'm sure there are differences. The JW-10 was a big machine, even though its keyboard was relatively regular.
There was a Japanese attempt in the late '80s/early '90s to create a Japanese computing platform called TRON, with very special support for Japanese. The character encoding was unique, with support for Kanji and even individual brush strokes to allow entering of unusual Kanji - such as ancient names of places.
The keyboard had an ergonomic layout, with its own layout for Kana, and it had an integrated digitizer that didn't just work as a pointing device but which was also intended for input of Kana and Kanji.
http://xahlee.info/kbd/TRON_keyboard.html
While the keyboard might look huge, the actual keycaps are smaller than standard.
(I have been fascinated by TRON ever since I first read about it in the late '80s... but there is not much written about it that is not in Japanese)
http://xahlee.info/kbd/alps_kanji_keyboard.html
http://xahlee.info/kbd/sanyo_medicom_keyboard.html
The history of Kana input (with conversion to Kanji) is pretty varied also:
The web site for the Esrille Nisse ergonomic keyboard describes several old layouts that the keyboard supports.
There is an article in the Wiki about the M-Shiki layout used on NEC PC-8801 series computers.
There was also a logical Hiragana layout on the MSX platform that I haven't seen elsewhere.
I found this article: Word Processing for the Japanese Language that talks about the Toshiba JW-10, developed in the 1970s. It seems that the JIS layout had been based on its keyboard but I'm sure there are differences. The JW-10 was a big machine, even though its keyboard was relatively regular.
There was a Japanese attempt in the late '80s/early '90s to create a Japanese computing platform called TRON, with very special support for Japanese. The character encoding was unique, with support for Kanji and even individual brush strokes to allow entering of unusual Kanji - such as ancient names of places.
The keyboard had an ergonomic layout, with its own layout for Kana, and it had an integrated digitizer that didn't just work as a pointing device but which was also intended for input of Kana and Kanji.
http://xahlee.info/kbd/TRON_keyboard.html
While the keyboard might look huge, the actual keycaps are smaller than standard.
(I have been fascinated by TRON ever since I first read about it in the late '80s... but there is not much written about it that is not in Japanese)
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chip chop
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The DT user JP! has the large Kanji board, details in this post: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=21937
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lhutton
- Location: NC, US
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Yes, that last black and white photo looks like the picture I had in my head. I couldn't remember the name of the system and searching "huge kanji keyboard" really didn't turn anything up. Nice to know I didn't imagine it. Thanks!
