Question

I’ve been testing typing inside textInput components with the Windows Japanese IME turned on. All works well out of the box, which is awesome. One (fairly specific) question I have, though, is about typing numbers. It seems from my limited experience that numbers typed in default to Zenkaku (2 bytes) which don’t seem to be accepted by the textinput as committed values. One can switch to Hankaku (1 Byte) notation by pressing F10 and the commit works. My question is about what’s acceptable to a user. From my uninformed standpoint it seems like having to press F10 would be super annoying for a user and thus either the textInput should accept Zenkaku values or it should default to typing Hankaku (both of which I assume may be possible with a little bit of code on focusIn or ValueCommitted). But then again, it could very well be that this is in fact the standard behavior for most web apps in Japanese and thus not annoying at all. In fact, there may be a great reason for why Zenkaku happens by default.

Would love to hear any thoughts from anyone who has dealt with localizing to Japanese, or any advice on web resources where an answer to such a question could be found.

thank you

f

Answer 1

I’m a Japanese web-app developer, without no skills about adobe flex. Sorry for non-flex-specific answer.

Most Japanese Windows users can switch IME on/off with “半角/全角” key. (Macintosh : “かな” key & “英数” key) It’s easier than pressing F10 after typing numbers. With announcement to type numbers in Hankaku, such as “半角で入力して下さい”, most Japanese users will type in Hankaku.

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Other methods

1. Switch off IME with CSS (works only in MS-InternetExplorer.)
   
// IE6
ime-mode: disabled;
// IE8
-ms-ime-mode: disabled;


2. Convert Zenkaku numbers to Hankaku automatically.