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Comment by riobard | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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.

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