Give us our hiragana

[Didgist]

There is a bug that currently locks all clients except the Japanese out of accessing Japanese input.

Any plans on unlocking access to this type of input? We still see your language bar pop up time to time, I am curious as to why this was arbitrarily removed.

[Alhanelem]

It's not a bug. It's by design. Japanese input controls are disabled in the NA client because SE didn't license the IME software they used in PS2 development outside of Japan. They considered it not to be worth the cost given the number of people in the US who can speak Japanese fluently and play this game.

There are ways of working around the restriction, technically, but they are unsupported and more or less against the user agreement.

[Ashvrei]

Hello,

Thank you for reporting your concern regarding Japanese input for Final Fantasy XI on applicable clients. Currently, there are no official plans announced to implement this. However, we're going to move this to General Discussion so we can receive some additional feedback.

Thank you,
SQUARE ENIX Moderator

[Rambus]

what is hiragana ? i am a bit confused what you want done.

[Bulrogg]

It is a writing system based on syllables.

Here is an example of a Hiragana chart.

[Xilk]

It's not a bug. It's by design. Japanese input controls are disabled in the NA client because SE didn't license the IME software they used in PS2 development outside of Japan. They considered it not to be worth the cost given the number of people in the US who can speak Japanese fluently and play this game.

There are ways of working around the restriction, technically, but they are unsupported and more or less against the user agreement.

please stop repeating this silly and false explanation. Any developer can use the microsoft IME. it is available by default in all current versions of windows. One does not need any special licensing to use this. the license agreement for the ms ime is between MS and the end user, not the developer.

[hiko]

It's not a bug. It's by design. Japanese input controls are disabled in the NA client because SE didn't license the IME software they used in PS2 development outside of Japan. They considered it not to be worth the cost given the number of people in the US who can speak Japanese fluently and play this game.

There are ways of working around the restriction, technically, but they are unsupported and more or less against the user agreement.

please stop repeating this silly and false explanation. Any developer can use the microsoft IME. it is available by default in all current versions of windows. One does not need any special licensing to use this. the license agreement for the ms ime is between MS and the end user, not the developer.

PS2 limitation!

[Andylynn]

If you can speak Japanese, why not romanize it? Pretty sure some Japanese players can easily comprehend what you want to get through to them.

[Mrbeansman]

If you can speak Japanese, why not romanize it? Pretty sure some Japanese players can easily comprehend what you want to get through to them.

Because it sets up the red flag that your a foreigner and thus should be ignored.

[Alhanelem]

please stop repeating this silly and false explanation. Any developer can use the microsoft IME. it is available by default in all current versions of windows. One does not need any special licensing to use this. the license agreement for the ms ime is between MS and the end user, not the developer.

it's not silly, nor is it false. They weren't going to use two different systems for the different platforms. When are you going to realize that the PC version is just the PS2 version copied over with the minimum amount of work needed to make it function on the PC?

The only other rational explanation is "SE doesn't want people who can't speak japanese using japanese characters in spam shouts." Which may be rational, but not true.

If you use third party programs to enable the Windows IME, the text is not being sent directly to FFXI. it's being handled by FFXI, it's being inputted into the IME tool in the third party program and being sent to FFXI from there. In other words, it's just bypassing FFXI's system for it.