This is insane. Just finding a single character must be a real challenge.
What is the character ordering on these cylinders? I counted about 40 characters per row, and I’m guessing about 40 rows around the cylinder (1/4 of a cylinder is around 10 rows). So that’s about 1,600 characters.
How does this typewriter score for usability? In Kanji, ~1000 characters mean basic literacy, and 2000-2500 characters is “newspaper level” literacy.
I still cannot wrap my mind around mastering the written form of this language.
Apparently 1,172 characters on that machine. No mention I could find of composability of characters, which is possible in theory (many characters are combinations of simpler characters, but combining them alters the representation, shrinking the component characters/substituting slightly different marks).
Something else I didn't see mention of: can you easily switch the cylinder or the rows to get different character sets? I can imagine a business making due with ~1,000 characters because their subject matter is narrower than a newspaper would generally need.
I really wish this other typewriter got a chance to enter mass production--it basically contained an ahead-of-its-time input method akin to modern Chinese/Kanji/Hanja on computers, rather than require hunting through 1000+ tiny characters on a grid.
Cool, I hadn't seen this video. I am currently working on mapping the character tray and boxes of a Taiwanese Jue Shine typewriter, which uses a different mechanism:
I find typing Kanji still a real challenge, I can read and handwrite Kanji to a decent enough level, like middle school, but I find it so slow to type and during that time frame I am second guessing myself if I am correct or not. Romaji or hiragana/katakana are equally as tricky in my view to type.
This is insane. Just finding a single character must be a real challenge.
What is the character ordering on these cylinders? I counted about 40 characters per row, and I’m guessing about 40 rows around the cylinder (1/4 of a cylinder is around 10 rows). So that’s about 1,600 characters.
How does this typewriter score for usability? In Kanji, ~1000 characters mean basic literacy, and 2000-2500 characters is “newspaper level” literacy.
I still cannot wrap my mind around mastering the written form of this language.
They are ordered based on the readings: https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2021/04/typewriter-three-lang...
Apparently 1,172 characters on that machine. No mention I could find of composability of characters, which is possible in theory (many characters are combinations of simpler characters, but combining them alters the representation, shrinking the component characters/substituting slightly different marks).
Something else I didn't see mention of: can you easily switch the cylinder or the rows to get different character sets? I can imagine a business making due with ~1,000 characters because their subject matter is narrower than a newspaper would generally need.
I really wish this other typewriter got a chance to enter mass production--it basically contained an ahead-of-its-time input method akin to modern Chinese/Kanji/Hanja on computers, rather than require hunting through 1000+ tiny characters on a grid.
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-uncanny-keyboard/
The possibly unique instance of the MingKwai typewriter, thought lost, was recently found, by the way:
https://typewriterrevolution.com/the-discovery-of-lin-yutang...
Cool, I hadn't seen this video. I am currently working on mapping the character tray and boxes of a Taiwanese Jue Shine typewriter, which uses a different mechanism:
https://typewriterdatabase.com/1972-jue-shine-747l.24670.typ...
The benefit of the tray system is that you can easily swap characters, which is essential for Chinese, but maybe less so for Japanese.
This page has both the video from above and some additional information: https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2021/04/typewriter-three-lang...
I find typing Kanji still a real challenge, I can read and handwrite Kanji to a decent enough level, like middle school, but I find it so slow to type and during that time frame I am second guessing myself if I am correct or not. Romaji or hiragana/katakana are equally as tricky in my view to type.
I always wondered how they did that...