

Ask HN: Review our app, typd.in (a web-based Japanese IME) - tr4nslator
http://typd.in

======
tr4nslator
Before kicking off work together on a startup, my cofounder and I have built
two test projects to make sure that we have a good technical fit.

If there are any Japanese typers out there, we'd love you to check out our
first project: typd.in. It's an unobtrusive bookmarklet that enables Japanese
input on any textarea/input on the web, even on platforms without a native
input method editor.

Any and all feedback appreciated!

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whacked_new
Pretty damn cool.

I only used it for about 30 seconds, but two things stood out. One, when I
press space (I assume it's henkan like usual), I assume it's doing a
dictionary search. The wait is pretty significant for something that needs to
be near-instant. Second, triggering the henkan seems to prevent any further
input.

Minorly, my phrase didn't henkan: koreha, yamanotesendesuka.

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jrockway
Very cute idea, but it's way too slow. Nobody wants to wait several seconds
for the server to return a composition.

I guess this might be nice if you are a Japanese person at a kiosk in the US
(etc.), but you probably can't install a bookmarklet in that case anyway.

~~~
stillmotion
Funny thing is, this is how Japanese people type in every day life. This is an
amazingly useful tool that could potentially make a lot of money from
companies looking to internationalize their web apps for Japanese typers who
are not using Japanese typing software support.

~~~
briansmith
You missed his point. Normal IMEs do not have the huge latency that this one
does.

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sfamiliar
you should license this to Rosetta Stone immediately. not kidding.

~~~
huhtenberg
This sort of thing is not that complex to develop to be suitable for
licensing.

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ryanspahn
I never wanted to type Japanese but if I ever needed to... now there is a
handy web service - good idea and work!

How about adding Chinese too?

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petercooper
I don't really know much about Japanese, but this is awesome! I know there's a
song called "Kaze Wo Atsumete" that I like, so I just typed that in and the
various symbols came up.. I copied and pasted it, and bam.. I was finding
music videos on YouTube I wouldn't have seen otherwise - and it was the right
song! Big thumbs up.

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LogicHoleFlaw
いいですね。このこんぴゅたあは日本語のIMEがありませんが今私はTYPD。INでしますよ。

すごいよ

でも私は少し日本語をできません。一年ぐらい大学に日本語を勉強しましたけど五年前でした。

~~~
jimbokun
Did you have trouble converting the characters for "computer" to katakana, or
was that just an oversight?

~~~
tr4nslator
Technically, it's a misspelling for こんぴゅーたー (konpyu-ta-), which converts
correctly into katakana.

But I really got a kick out of seeing someone use the tool itself to give us
feedback...

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
Ah, you caught me. I'm way out of practice ^^;;

"コンピューター"

Sure enough, it's my spelling which was at fault.

Some documentation on the key commands available would be handy - I was able
to figure out a bit about the space bar and arrow keys but I'm sure I'm
missing some features. I'm on my Ubuntu/Firefox box at work currently so
that's the environment I'm working in. I don't currently have an IME set up
here. I did have difficulty trying to type romaji, such as "typd.in" in the
midst of the kana. A shortcut key to transpose directly to katakana would be
handy. Trailing 'n's didn't convert directly to hiragana while typing in most
cases - I had to follow with another character to get it to take, which was
kind of jarring.

The bookmarklet is very clever. I'm going to post it to a message board I
frequent which has lots of aspiring Japanese students, if that's ok. I'm sure
you can get some good feedback from them.

One thing that would be a killer-app to someone like me whose writing is
atrocious would be a feature to display definitions of kana in both english
and japanese when displaying possible readings. Sort of like an on-the-fly
rikaichan.

Anyway, very cool app. Good luck!

------
ken
This is pretty cool. I can even see using it on Linux, because I still haven't
figured out how to get the Japanese input method to work there decently.

My one issue is that selection is a bit odd. If you type a word, the whole
word looks selected, even though it doesn't act that way. If you hold down the
delete key, it deletes one character and stops. It works really well if you
already know what you're typing and make no mistakes, but slightly less well
otherwise.

I really like what the Mac does here: use underline to indicate "still working
on this word", so selection still means selection. But that might not be
feasible (portably) in an HTML textfield.

~~~
tr4nslator
One of the trade-offs of using an unobtrusive approach (no DOM insertion) to
maximize compatibility is that we're limited to the decoration offered by a
vanilla text control. Otherwise, the flow of insertion/deletion/selection was
based on OS X, so I think you'll find it familiar.

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huhtenberg
A bug report. Bookmarklet doesn't work correctly in a textarea with a vertical
scroll bar.

Just fill a textarea with lots of text and click on bookmarklet. First, the
indicator will be hidden by the scroll bar. Second, try adding anything at the
bottom of the text and you'll see the problem.

You may want to have a look at <http://translit.ru> for some ideas on how to
overcome the scrolling issue.

~~~
tr4nslator
Thanks for the good feedback. I think we'll need to move the indicator to the
left side and pad the input to offset it, so that it's more visible.

Correcting scrolling is less trivial, and will have to wait for v2.

------
riobard
Hey the idea is cool! I recalled a similar tool for Chinese. It's actually a
Firefox extension, allowing ones without a native IME to input Chinese chars
in text fields. However, both typd.in and that plugin share a similar
limitation: it's unusable OUTSIDE the browser :|

Plus, what's your target audience? Anyone serious enough to type Japanese
should have some native IME installed, right?

~~~
jcl
I'm guessing it would be great for anyone using a computer on which they don't
have administrative access, like people in internet cafes, jobs, or schools.
It would also be good for people who want to enter some text but don't want to
go through the hassle of setting up the operating system's IME, like a first-
time language student eager to jump in or a person who just needs to reproduce
a few characters of foreign text. I suppose it may also be useful in contexts
where an IME isn't available (some mobile devices?) or where cross-platform
IME instructions are needed.

Great idea, btw. I have found myself looking for something like this in the
past.

~~~
tr4nslator
This is exactly what we had in mind. The latency of hitting the server for
each kanji conversion would make it difficult to compete with a native
implementation, but this is just a hack to fill in the holes when no such
implementation exists.

Aside from other language support, we're thinking of eventually implementing a
passive feedback mechanism that would tell the back end about conversion
preferences, so that users could teach the system merely by correcting
suggestions.

------
siong1987
[http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/10/yamli-makes-it-easy-
to-...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/10/yamli-makes-it-easy-to-use-
arabic-on-the-web/)

If you come out with this web application first, then, you may be featured on
Techcrunch before Yamli.

Yamli enables you to type arabic on the net.

------
orib
Why is this better than me right-clicking in any GTK text widget and selecting
the appropriate input method from the drop down menu? (note that Firefox
doesn't have that because it's not an actual GTK app -- it's only pretending.
I'd say it's a better idea to fix Firefox though...)

------
yokumtaku
The app was neat, but I think anyone that has a need to type Japanese already
has an IME. The latency of the app was irritating enough to make me not want
to use it for anything more than typing a couple of characters. If it was
faster, it would be much more useful. Nice job.

------
rgrieselhuber
This is brilliant. I _hate_ switching my OS IME when I need to type in
Japanese.

I don't know how you'll monetize this particular implementation but you've
come with a fantastic technology. I'm sure you'll do very well. Congrats.

~~~
briansmith
Really? Usually I have to do on Windows is push Alt+` to switch between
English and Japanese. Sometimes I might have to press Shift+Alt first. It
isn't very intuitive but it is very quick to do.

~~~
rgrieselhuber
Yup. I'm on the Mac and it's one of the things I haven't found a good keyboard
shortcut. Drives me up a wall.

------
SapphireSun
Awesome idea! One criticism: You should provide a button that allows people to
select hiragana they already typed and have it processed into kanji. You might
want to include a pure text mode and allow a non-realtime "compilation"

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takeshi
日本語ユーザーです。 変換のするときにIMEみたいに変換候補が出てこないのが不思議ですが、それを除けば使い勝手はとても良いと思います。
頑張ってください。応援しています!

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ucdaz
I like how the UI is very clean and straight forward. Not sure if this
technology will be used by the masses in the US. It would be a lot cooler if
you allowed your users to type in special symbols like copyright or emoticons.

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unalone
That's pretty excellent. I was in a Japanese class and wondered why the
systems for typing were so app-centric. This seems like it could work anywhere
(though, out of curiosity, does it work on IE6?). Well done.

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Raphael
Perhaps you could use HTML5 client-side storage to speed up the conversion to
kanji. Cache the most common right off the bat and every one after that.

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sc
Love it! My only suggestion is to check the hoverstate style for the
bookmarklet. A normally resized browser window completely hides the arrow.

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jimbokun
I'm pretty sure I'll find a use for this at some point.

Thanks!

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sfamiliar
this is pretty fantastic. のほんごああかりません、いごねがいします。

that it can be turned on and off with the same click is great. double-plus
good.

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markbao
This would be amazing as a Chinese IME.

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ram1024
i can't type japanese, but i think this is a great ... thing you have here ^_^

seems to fill a needed role

~~~
RKlophaus
I agree. From a technology perspective, it is very clever.

