> I've installed the xemacs-20.4 package, with mule support, and am

I'm using GNU Emacs...

> neither are doing any hiragana->kanji translations. I think I may need 
> to install a library (Wnn? Canna? sj3?) that mule will communicate
> with to find the right kanji,

Of course,

> but I have had no luck finding any such library to compile. It's
> quite possible that the information and files I need are readily
> available on a Japanese language site, but my knowledge of Japanese

I cannot find these useful English docs, too...

> itself in Japanese.  If indeed it is necessary to compile additional
> libraries, and they're available on the net, and someone out there

Much available. See FreeBSD's application library

  http://www.freebsd.org/ports/

and

  http://www.freebsd.org/ports/japanese.html.

You can find source files at FreeBSD's distfile directories.

Surprisingly, more than one tenth of FreeBSD applications are
classified as ``Japanese'' category. :D

> can help me with this, I'll try to put together a package for it so
> that others might have an easier time.  Thanks for any help.  -Zach
> Fine czyz@serv.net

Constructing Japanese environment may be easy (at least, for us), but
costs much time. I manually make my Japanese environment so far and
other Japanese users may do the same.

One of the reason why there are few package directories below
/usr/pkgsrc/japanese is not technical but political problem. Most of
Japanese apps are patched, which is specialized for Japanese. These
patch or configurations mostly cannot be dynamic, so become
incompatible with standard ones.

Without clear policy, the situation will run rather chaotic as
FreeBSD. I know that some people even feel annoyance about too much
Japanese related archives, who are sufficient in ASCII environment. :-P

Anyway, If you hurry, you'd better consult Ken Lude's book. (sorry!)
If not, and if you want, I'm sure to write doc about ``how to input
Japanese'' within 3 yrs. ;-)

Masao

---

  ``My economic life -- never in the realms of economics.''

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