RE: Writing Japanese using ConTeXt

["Tim 't Hart" <tim@t-hart.com>]

Hans Hagen wrote:

> you mix up two mechanisms:

Yes, after studying the Chinese module for a while, I also came to the
conclusion that I mixed up bad! :-)

So instead of enjoying the nice weather during the weekend, I wrote some
mapping files that will create subfonts for EUC-JP encoding. Each subfont
contains glyphs with the same first byte, just like the idea behind the
Chinese module. 

Then I wrote a basic 'font-jpn.tex' file and now I can write Japanese in
EUC-JP encoding, including basic line breaking!

I was still working on this and wanted to release it when it was more
useful, but I guess I have to speed things up now. Also, since I'm not an
expert in ConText, I'm sure I'm doing some things completely the wrong way,
so I think it's good if someone else will take a look at it. There is a lot
to improve! :-)

> - How are the rules for breaking?

The rules are basically the same as in Chinese. Japanese also contains
smaller versions of the kana (hiragana and katakana) glyphs, and breaking
before those is not allowed as well. Also, there seems to be different
classes of breaking: for some characters breaking is strictly forbidden, and
for some it is slightly forbidden. (I guess they mean that you should not
break slightly forbidden characters, but if the penalty is too bad, break
them anyway)

> Can you make a small test suite?

Yes, I am at work right now, but when I get back, I'll send you the mapping
files to make the fonts, the font-jpn file I was working on, and some other
things like sample files and line breaking rules.

My best,
Tim