The Basics of Electronic Japanese Information Processing
Abstract
The intention of this paper is to describe the relation that exists between the
Japanese written language and electronic information processing. To accomplish this,
the paper will discuss the major characteristics of the Japanese written language and
past and present methods by which Japanese text is electronically represented, entered
into computers, internally processed, and output to both video displays and printers.
The discussion will include the following: the history of Japanese characters; the
choice of the best writing system for Japanese computer use; Japanese character sets;
character encoding methods; various input hardware and software; techniques for
dealing with encoded Japanese data; and output issues such as fonts and text
formatting. Problems in each of these areas will be discussed and various methods
will be compared and contrasted. It is the author's hope that the reader will come to
understand how Japanese processing has progressed, to what degree it is possible
today, how this processing is actually accomplished, and in what ways it is still quite
limited.