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I asked this question already on Superuser, but I'm starting to get the feeling that I asked it in the wrong community, so decided to ask it here as well.

I'm just looking for a kmap file for Japanese Kana (no Kanji), but for some reason I can't find one, even though mapping keystrokes to Kana should be just as straight forward as doing so for roman-lettered alphabets.

Alex
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    You can't type Kana directly without IME like fcitx-mozc or ibus-anthy, etc. Once the IME turned on, you can choose Kana or Romaji input from the preference menu. – Sadaharu Wakisaka Aug 02 '18 at 00:04
  • Thank you for your advice, but I want to create my own IME for japanese characters. So I only need a file that contains the japanese alphabets, but I can't find it. I will try to find out where fcitx-mozc or ibus-anthy have hidden the alphabets, but if anyone can tell my where it is I'd greatly appreciate it. – Alex Aug 02 '18 at 08:24
  • Btw: I don't require the complexity of an IME that takes Romaji and then opens a window to let you decide between Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. On Wikipedia I saw keyboards that have one Kana per key and one key to switch between Hiragana and Katakana. I would like to support these keyboards. – Alex Aug 02 '18 at 09:40
  • Yes, you may change your keyboard layout, sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration https://askubuntu.com/questions/153115/how-do-i-change-the-system-default-keyboard and remap each key links Hiragana by xmodmap or so (Assume you must change many things locale etc.). Then you can't type any alphabet letters anymore. Therefore, IME is required. IME configure window you see Kana input alongside of Romaji input. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1053157/japanese-default-input-mode – Sadaharu Wakisaka Aug 03 '18 at 10:32
  • It's ok if I can't type any alphabet letters anymore, but instead of modifying an existing keymap I just want to load different keymaps. But I can't find a Japanese ".kmap" file and it didn't work to just say "ckbcomp jp >> jp.kmap". The letters were still Romaji. – Alex Aug 06 '18 at 11:10
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    If I install Mozc in Ubuntu and select Input Mode Hiragana or Katakana and then I also go to "Tools/Properties/General/Basics/Input mode" and select "Kana", then I can input Kana as if it would be a Japanese keyboard. This is exactly the behavior I wish to copy and all I should need for that is a .kmap file, but it seems to be very well hidden. – Alex Aug 07 '18 at 07:23
  • Katakana and Hiragana needs about 110 keys and numbers or punctuation marks etc. total amount of these will require too many buttons on the keyboard. So IME does a virtual keyboard of all these many buttons. We turn IME on, then the keyboard behaves more advanced than editing .kmap file, when we turn IME off, we get back to the original keyboard layout in a micro second. – Sadaharu Wakisaka Aug 07 '18 at 23:31
  • Wikipedia shows multiple keyboards who can manage Kana just fine. They don't need 110 buttons. I really just need to support the symbols on the buttons and nothing advanved. – Alex Aug 08 '18 at 06:52
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_typewriter#/media/File:JapaneseTtypewriter.jpg I remember it was in my elementary school. And I observed some operation, it has more than 1,000 typefaces and move the selector on it. I do understand what you mean, but I do not understand what is the use of creating kmap which only types one set of Japanese alphabet, and switch another layer when the Hiragana/Katakana/Alphabet key is pressed. IME does that work already. – Sadaharu Wakisaka Aug 09 '18 at 05:23
  • We program some hardware with a very small custom OS that is based on Linux, but we have our own GUI. We had to program keymapping ourselves for all languages. I can't simply install IME like in Ubuntu. To add IME I would have to understand the IME code and change it accordingly. It would be much easier if I could add a kmap file, because then most of it would work easily like all other languages. I would only have to take care of special cases like switching layers or managing `` and °. – Alex Aug 09 '18 at 08:38
  • From HP200LX has 4MB total memory, or even PC-9800 has 640kB for RAM, I used to input with IME, both run an editor on DOS 3.x , therefore I can be small. ATOK and MSIME have been famous. In Linux or UNIX, it's called Canna, now ibus method or Mozc engine are too big but you can make it small. – Sadaharu Wakisaka Aug 09 '18 at 10:34
  • Thank you, but it's not about size, it's about compatibility. – Alex Aug 10 '18 at 08:59
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    You are welcome, the fork softwares of Canna are still available. For example, this https://github.com/hashimom/Izumo or this http://srobb.net/jpninpt.html – Sadaharu Wakisaka Aug 10 '18 at 10:30
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    Thank you for the links and all the time and patience you invested in helping me with my problem. :-) However, I have finally created my own keymap file and it works fine. – Alex Aug 10 '18 at 15:13

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Search strategy

Simple! These projects are open-sourced. So you need to navigate and search for the keymaps! And search for japanese special keys and, romaji (hiragana) characters.

How

To find them:

  1. Go to the project's sites.
  2. Find the source-code navigation section.
  3. Click on the search text-field.
  4. Type the keywords , like:
    1. to search for table's conversions: keymap, table.
    2. to search the kana conversion: kana, hiragana.
    3. the last one is a popular misspelled word: romaji, romanji.
    4. to search for the japanese special keys: hankaku (半角), zenkaku (全角), eisu (英数), muhenkan (無変換), henkan (変換), katakana (カタカナ), hiragana (ひらがな), romaji (ローマ字).
    5. to search hiragana keys: あ, 。, ん, 「 and others japanese (symbols and hiragana) characters.

Results

Japanese IMEs (for ibus IMF) and their keymaps + romaji-kana tables:

That's all!

paulolimac
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