ATOK
Encyclopedia
ATOK is a Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

 input method editor
Input method editor
An input method is an operating system component or program that allows any data, such as keyboard strokes or mouse movements, to be received as input. In this way users can enter characters and symbols not found on their input devices...

 (IME) produced by JustSystems
JustSystems
is a major Japanese software development house. The company is also known as "JustSystem." Its main products are Ichitaro , a word processor, and Hanako, a graphics package that remains competitive in the Japanese market, despite strong and controversial competitive pressures from Microsoft in the...

, a Japanese software company.

ATOK is an IME with roots from 1983 and DOS, but it now supports a large number of platforms including Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, Android, and iOS.

Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

 chose ATOK as their input method when running under the JP locale
Locale
In computing, locale is a set of parameters that defines the user's language, country and any special variant preferences that the user wants to see in their user interface...

 in Solaris 10 and above, enhancing Sun's already strong Japanese language support.
For embedded systems, JustSystems has developed +ATOK. Some Japanese mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...

s, PDAs
Personal digital assistant
A personal digital assistant , also known as a palmtop computer, or personal data assistant, is a mobile device that functions as a personal information manager. Current PDAs often have the ability to connect to the Internet...

, video game console
Video game console
A video game console is an interactive entertainment computer or customized computer system that produces a video display signal which can be used with a display device to display a video game...

s (PSP
PlayStation Portable
The is a handheld game console manufactured and marketed by Sony Corporation Development of the console was announced during E3 2003, and it was unveiled on , 2004, at a Sony press conference before E3 2004...

, PS3 and Wii
Wii
The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others...

), digital video recorder
Digital video recorder
A digital video recorder , sometimes referred to by the merchandising term personal video recorder , is a consumer electronics device or application software that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card or other local or networked mass storage device...

s, automotive navigation system
Automotive navigation system
An automotive navigation system is a satellite navigation system designed for use in automobiles. It typically uses a GPS navigation device to acquire position data to locate the user on a road in the unit's map database. Using the road database, the unit can give directions to other locations...

s come with +ATOK.

Once ATOK meant Automatic Transfer Of Kana
Kana
Kana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...

-kanji
Kanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...

. Now, it means Advanced Technology Of Kana-kanji Transfer. It is occasionally taken to stand for Awa
Awa Province (Tokushima)
was an old province of Japan in the area that is today a part of Tokushima Prefecture on Shikoku. Awa was bordered by Tosa, Sanuki, and Iyo Provinces. It was sometimes called .-References:...

-TOKushima
Tokushima Prefecture
is a prefecture of Japan located on Shikoku island. The capital is the city of Tokushima.- Tokushima Prefecture and Myodo Prefecture :Long ago, Tokushima City belonged to a region known as Myōdō-gun...

, site of the headquarters of JustSystems, or ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...

 TO Kanji
Kanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...

.

The word "ATOK" is generally pronounced ˈeɪtɔːk in English.

Functions

Functions vary between versions for different platforms, and the following list is not exhaustive.
  • Search kanji
    Kanji
    Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...

     from phonetic input - both using romaji keyboard and kana
    Kana
    Kana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...

     keyboard.
  • Search kanji by radical
    Radical (Chinese character)
    A Chinese radical is a component of a Chinese character. The term may variously refer to the original semantic element of a character, or to any semantic element, or, loosely, to any element whatever its origin or purpose...

    .
  • Drawing pad for handwriting recognition.
  • Reverse retrieval of phonetic input - both to kunyomi and onyomi.
  • Text templates for standard phrases, address labels and Japanese emoticon
    Emoticon
    An emoticon is a facial expression pictorially represented by punctuation and letters, usually to express a writer’s mood. Emoticons are often used to alert a responder to the tenor or temper of a statement, and can change and improve interpretation of plain text. The word is a portmanteau word...

    s.
  • Real time auto-completion of text - both Japanese and English. (Example: type "fun" and you immediately get a list of words starting with "fun": function, fun, fund, funk...).
  • Character information, JIS
    JIS encoding
    In computing, JIS encoding refers to several Japanese Industrial Standards for encoding the Japanese language. Strictly speaking, the term means either:* A set of standard character sets for Japanese, notably:...

     and Unicode
    Unicode
    Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

     codes, pronunciations, related characters.
  • Japanese date formats.
  • Character palette for input of special symbols, accented Latin, Russian, etc.
  • Customizable input keys and keyboard shortcuts for the different functions.


As of September 2011, the latest version for Windows is ATOK 2011; for Macintosh, ATOK 2011; and for Linux, ATOK X3. ATOK is also available for iOS
IOS
iOS is an operating system for iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Apple TV.IOS may also refer to:-Companies and organisations:* Illinois Ornithological Society, American state-based bird club...

, Android and other smartphone platforms.

See also

  • Ichitaro
    Ichitaro
    is a Japanese word processor produced by JustSystems, a Japanese software company. Ichitaro occupies the second share in Japanese word-processing software, behind Microsoft Word. It is one of the main products of the company. Its proprietary file extension is ".JTD"...

     - a Japanese word processor
    Word processor
    A word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....

    produced by Justsystems. ATOK comes bundled with this.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK