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Roughly, the issues are mostly either in the presentation or the input of Japanese text.
There are several standard methods to encode characters for use on a computer, including JIS, SJIS, EUC, and Unicode. While mapping the set of kana is a simple matter, kanji has proven more difficult. Despite efforts, none of the encoding schemes have become the de facto standard, and multiple encoding standards are still in use today. For example, most Japanese e-mails are in JIS encoding and web pages in Shift-JIS. If a program fails to determine the used encoding scheme, it can cause mojibake (misconverted characters, literally "character ghosts") and thus unreadable Japanese text on computers.
Not all required characters may be included in a character set standard such as JIS , so gaiji (外字, external characters) are sometimes used to supplement the character set. Gaiji may come in the form of external font packs, where normal characters have been replaced with new characters, or the new characters have been added to unused character positions. However, gaiji is not practical in InternetThis article is about the Internet the extensive, worldwide computer network available to the public. An internet is a more general term for a set of interconnected computer networks that are connected by internetworking''. WWW information network structu environments since the font set must be transferred with text to use the gaiji. As a result, such characters are written with similar or simpler characters in place, or the text may need to be written using a larger character set (such as Unicode) that supports the required character.
Typing Japanese text to a computer is a complicated matter because it is practically impossible to type all of the characters used in Japanese writing system with the limited number of keys in keyboards. On modern computers, usually the reading of characters is entered first, then an Input Method EditorAn Input Method Editor (IME) is a program or operating system component that allows computer users to enter complex characters and symbols (such as Japanese, Chinese, Tibetan and Korean characters), using a standard Western keyboard. It is also often call shows a list of candidate kanji that are a phonetic match, and allows the user to choose the correct characters. The input of reading can be either via romanization (romaji nyuryoku) or direct kana input (kana nyuryoku). Direct kana input is on the verge of extinction, although it is still widely supported. While there are two main systems for the romanization of Japanese, known as Kunrei-shikiKunrei-shiki (, "Cabinet-ordered system") is a romanization system, that is, a system for transcribing the Japanese language into the Roman alphabet. Its name is rendered Kunreisiki using Kunrei-shiki itself. Kunrei-shiki is sometimes known as the Monbush and Hepburn, "keyboard romaji" (also known as wpuro romaji or "word processor romaji") generally allows a loose combination of both; IME implementations may even handle keys for letters unused in any romanization scheme, such as L, converting them to the most appropriate equivalent. With kana input, each key on the keyboard directly corresponds to one kana. The distribution of kana on the keyboard can be either Oyayubi shift system, which is now obsolete, or JIS keyboard system.