vB Easy Archive - Method to input Japanese using Euro firmware

Pages: 1

Method to input Japanese using Euro firmware - 802, 902, 703, 903
(Click here to view the original thread with full colors/images)

Posted by: AL9999

I've devised a way of being able to type Japanese characters into the four above phones (Sharp 802, 902, 703, 903). It's very crude and slow, but it's a workable method for those of you using the European firmware (users of HK and Taiwan firmwares are welcome to try it but I can't guarantee it will work). It involves using the templates function of the phone.

I've saved 50 different templates including the entire Hiragana and Katakana (half & full width) alphabets, as well as 116 often-used Kanji into a vNote file. I've attached this file to this post, it's called Japanese.vnt.txt. Rename the file so as to remove the .txt from the end of it (forum uploader restricts .vnt files), and save it to PRIVATE\VODAFONE\My Items\Templates\Text only\Text only.BCK on your memory card. Use your phone's memory card backup function (Main Menu -> Connectivity -> Memory Card -> Restore -> Text) to restore the backed up vNote file, and it will replace your current templates with the Japanese ones. If you already have templates saved, I suggest backing them up before you restore these Japanese ones as you'll lose them otherwise.

You can then input Japanese anywhere in the phone where it allows you to insert templates. It's a slow and clumsy method for doing it, but it works.

Please post any requests for Japanese Kanji that you think should be there but isn't, or add them into the file yourself if you know how to do it.

Posted by: lunar

Why not just leave the phone set in Japanese?

Posted by: evilgabbie

nice work !!! very interesting

Posted by: AL9999

Quote:

Originally Posted by lunar

Why not just leave the phone set in Japanese?

Because that would be too easy wouldn't it?

I'm offering this to users of the Euro firmware, not the JP one. If you have the JP one you already have the input software and don't need a work around like this. In the Euro firmware there is no option for Japanese (although JP text displays fine).

Posted by: Toh

Wow!
It works on 902, smartone FW too. Although, It is very slow to copy characters but you give alternative choice for users who don't use JP FW.
Thank you so much. ^^

Posted by: ChunkyRice

can you guys have t9 for english the japanese 903sh? if you guys do, it'd be awesome.

Posted by: Timsta

nice. thats cool. not much use for me. .but this is definitely useful for alot of users here that type and write japanese. how slow are we talkin about? for the character selection?

Posted by: Pozzy

Quote:

Originally Posted by lunar

Why not just leave the phone set in Japanese?

Because the god-damned Japanese firmware doesn't support POP3 email.

Posted by: Timsta

you sound so bitter, chris

Posted by: Pozzy

Quote:

Originally Posted by Timsta

you sound so bitter, chris

*grumble*

When your fiance is Japanese and you have many friends that are Japanese nationals, it tends to help.

*slaps the vodafone email*

Posted by: AL9999

Well Tim, there are five letters per template, for example あいうえお or かきくけこ. The way you write Japanese with this is like this. Say you want to write こんにちは (konnichiwa). You'd need to select a template for each letter - かきくけこ for the first one, わをん。、・！？「」 for the second, なにぬねの for the third, たちつてと for the fourth, はひふへほ for the fifth. The slowness comes from the need to have to go through the menus each time to select a template, and then from deleting the unnecessary letters that get added in. When you add all five of those templates, you get:

かきくけこわをん。、・！？「」なにぬねのたちつてとはひふへほ. It's a long line. Once you delete all the unnecessary letters, you're left with こんにちは.

And that, is how you do it.

Posted by: Timsta

ahh.. i like your new method. i copied your instruction method. i trid it last night. i dont' read jap. but i was fiddling with it.

slow.. but work. so nthats good.

Posted by: AL9999

Yeah that's the point. It's slow, but it actually allows you to do it in the first place, if it's really necessary to you.

Posted by: koh-kun

so the euro firmware DISPLAYS japanese characters? all of them? even for mp3s? If someone can confirm that for me then I'm so going to pick up a 903 (since it seems like the december batch can be unlocked...)!!

Posted by: AL9999

Yes it displays Japanese characters everywhere, including in the MP3 player. You may need to rewrite the ID3 tag info in the MP3s though, because sometimes they're using the wrong encoding in them and won't display properly on the phone. I just did that now, had to delete the ID3 tags and recreate them with one MP3, and then they displayed fine in the phone's music player.

The 903 doesn't support AAC ID tags though.

Posted by: koh-kun

My goodness!!! I didn't know that. Here I was waiting for the repro to be fixed on the Japanese firmware so I can play my Japanese mp3s! stupid me! Thank you so much!

Posted by: AL9999

Yep, Euro firmware displays Japanese no problem, but it doesn't have the input software to type JP characters, so unless you use my method above of typing them, you can't write Japanese using the Euro firmware.

Posted by: AL9999

Update No 1: I've fixed a few things with the original file. I've streamlined the half-width katakana characters, removing unnecessary lines and making them easier to enter (there's now 45 templates instead of 50). Also fixed a typo with half-width Katakana 'wo', shifted the katakana ya yu yo letters around, and shifted the positioning of punctuation characters as well. Should be friendlier to use now.

Posted by: zabieru

tried it on my hk firmware and it works perfectly! sankyu!

Posted by: AL9999

Update No 2: Added little katakana a i u e o tsu (and their half-width versions), after realising I had forgotten them. Apologies. Also moved hiragana wa wo n to the top and deleted their old line from the middle of the list.

Posted by: Timsta

haha. you come out with more firmware updates than sharp has over hte past year!. kudos!

Posted by: AL9999

Hehe yeah, I keep playing with the JP input in my phone here and there, and I realise I made some stupid mistake somewhere, so I fix it up and then post the file up here

Now if I knew of a way to unbar the JP input software, now that would be cool... hehehe

Posted by: cybermat88

Now all you need is to create a kanji (chinese character) template, then we are all set

There are almost 4000 chinese characters that get used regulary in the Japanese language.

Posted by: AL9999

It's actually more like 2000, but even so that's way too many to be putting in template files. You'll be scrolling through each entry trying to find where you stored a particular kanji, and scrolling through a million lines just to enter one character would put many people off at least.

If you want you're welcome to download the template file and add the kanji in that suit you. The file is easily edited.

Posted by: cybermat88

I was joking, but thanks for the work.

Posted by: AL9999

Ah ok, I didn't pick it

Slow work day today...

Posted by: Rolaquin

oh man, works GREAT al! =D saved me all the hassles and worry of looking for a jap firmware... and f.y.i to other people who are curious, it works for the chinese firmware! XD tried, tested, and true.

Posted by: CalmLikeaBomb86

Japanese on Euro is freaking awesome!!! Thanks for going through the trouble for us!

Posted by: Timsta

isn't al great.. so dreamy. haha. kiddin.

such a great functionality. too bad.. ther'es no euro for 904sh

Posted by: AL9999

Hehe glad everyone is getting something out of it. Thanks for confirming that it works on Chinese firmware, I'll edit the original post to reflect that.

If they did make a Euro, it would be great if they got JP input working, but now that they aren't doing dual JP-Euro releases anymore, I can't see any incentive that would make them do it. So sad...

EDIT: Strike that... forgot that this forum stops you editing old posts. Ah well...

Posted by: Timsta

yo. i mentioned in another thread that it might be possible to get a chinese version of your document going.. in theory it would work the same would it not?

Posted by: AL9999

Yeah, I'm not sure if you use a Chinese encoding like Big5 or GB2312, or if you just add the characters through Japanese Shift-JIS encoding. However I don't know Chinese so if anyone wants to take the file and have a go at it, be my guest.

Posted by: Rolaquin

Yeaaaaaaaaaaah, you're back Timsta! XD

Posted by: Timsta

haha. thanks. yup i'm back. whew. hehe

Posted by: AL9999

Update No 3: Added a new template with shapes (music note, stars, triangles, squares, diamonds and circles), reorganised the punctuation templates and added a few more punctuation symbols as well as the 々, ゝ and ゞ repeatable characters.

Posted by: scotttttttttt

Quote:

Originally Posted by AL9999

(music note, stars, triangles, squares, diamonds and circles)

ShiftJIS art on-the-go?

Posted by: AL9999

♪※☆★△▲▽▼□■◇◆○◎●

You get the drift.

Posted by: errorrrr

Sigh... Sharp has such great phones... I just don't understand why they dont' release them international or at least make it easier to unlocked like SE does...

Posted by: AL9999

It's been a little while since this thread was updated, so I'd like to say I've made a few changes to my text template file in recent months that should make entering of frequently used characters (such as punctuation) easier. I'll post the updated file tonight.

Posted by: martindesu

Quote:

Originally Posted by AL9999

It's been a little while since this thread was updated, so I'd like to say I've made a few changes to my text template file in recent months that should make entering of frequently used characters (such as punctuation) easier. I'll post the updated file tonight.

Does this allow the pop application to send Japanese mail without it getting garbled like my 903SH JP fw does?

Thanks,
Martin

Posted by: AL9999

On Euro firmware, email is sent in Unicode UTF-8 and there's no way to change this. What this means is that some DoCoMo mova (PDC) phones, some Softbank PDC, all DoCoMo FOMA and all Softbank 3G phones can receive Japanese email without a problem, but all KDDI au phones get garbled messages because they don't support Unicode (quite stupidly, I don't know what KDDI is thinking here).

This was the situation a year ago when I was roaming in Japan and using my own email address to send Japanese email. When I get my Three email address I'll retest the situation and let you know how it is.

Posted by: AL9999

Oh I forgot to mention, messages would be getting garbled on your JP firmware because they're sent through MMS, which go through your carrier's MMSC servers and get re-encoded into email format. Most carriers' MMSC servers don't support double-byte characters properly, so this is where messages get garbled.

Email on the other hand isn't modified in any way if sent from the Euro firmware's POP client, so that's why it goes through without a problem.