Google JA IME with Dvorak layout
What the hell does that mean?
When we computer users need to use language that has more glyphs than what’s available on the keyboard (Chinese, Japanese and Korean are very notorious about that), we rely on a software called Input Method Editor – IME. Google just released the Japanese version of their IME today. I always love to try out these new products that I might use. So like hundreds of people out there, I jumped on this case as well.
My first trouble was it defaults to Qwerty layout. The fix was somewhat easy, since I had to make the same fix for MS-IME. On Windows XP, find the location HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layouts\E0200411, and change the value for Layout File from Kbdjpn.dll to Kbddv.dll, then reboot. Exact same thing as the fix for MS-IME except for the lowest part of the location difference of E0010411 and E0200411.
Apparently it doesn’t work on 64-bit version of Windows yet. They’re already working on it – I sure hope it’ll come out soon, since I just recently installed Windows7 64-bit on this PC. (It’s currently set up to do dual-boot between XP 32-bit and Win7 64-bit.)
Otherwise, I don’t have much to talk about the actual product yet – I haven’t used it enough to do the full evaluation. That will have to wait for later date.
update Jan 6: It took Google only couple of weeks before they released the 64-bit version. Yes, it’s now working smoothly on my Windows 7 64-bit.