Using Japanese Clies on Macs

[Lang]

As a native English speaker who lives and works in Japan, I prefer an OS that can handle Japanese documents without a problem, although I prefer to use English language versions of software whenever possible. The Mac OS is great in this respect (especially 0SX) but with Palm OS 5, a Japanese Clie is my only option, it seems. I bought my NX70V in June, and though I am fairly happy with it, it is a struggle to get things synced across both the Mac-Clie AND English-Japanese divide. It seems that there are others out there that are in the same situation (Hank Lee, Steve, are you tuned in?) and would love to love to hear what their exeriences and advice would be.

Since there is very little support out there able to deal with this situation, I've had to experiment, and this is what I've found:

Must use the Japanese version of Palm desktop
Must log back into the Mac OS in a Japanese language environment
The clie needs to use the following folders labled in Japanese:document/palm/users and library/application support/Palm HotSync/conduits
Since English language software requiring conduits will look for folders labled in English, it is possible to get things to work by manually moving conduits, etc. from folders labled in English to folders labled in Japanese (Sometimes!)

Even with a lot of experimentation, I could NOT get this to work with Documents to Go. I probably need the Japanese version of the software anyway if I want to keep it from garbling the Japanese documents, so I'll have to see if I can talk DataViz into letting me switch. Getting Word, Excel, and PDF documents onto my Clie is important to me!

My next challenge will be to see if I can get the Entourage conduit to work - with my combination of international and Japanese addresses. Looks like it could be tricky. Any experiences?

I also have not ventured into 3rd party apps very much. Anybody run into issues using English software on Japanese Clies? How about AvantGo?

All advice, comments, and experiences appreciated.

cheers,
Lang

[leehljp]

I use the Clie primarily for the datebook and address book, which is a huge necessity for me. I don't always carry my PB around, so I need the Clie. My organization sends out a monthly MS Word doc with members addresses in both English and Japanese. I use MakeDocDD to change the Word file into a PDB file and open it with TealDoc on my Clie. Works great for me.

It is really helpful when I need to address something in Japanese and have every stroke of a Kanji very clearly visible.

[leehljp]

I "thought" I had logged in on the above post that included "MakeDocDD" and MS Word Docs. Apologies!

Hank Lee
Osaka, Japan

[Lang]

Thanks for the software recommendations. I poled around a bit and found them. MakeDocDD is made by a guy here in Japan, so naturally it would work with Japanese systems. TealDoc has a Japanese version on its page - is that what you use, or the English version?

I was hoping to keep formating as intact as possible, since there are a lot of boxes and tables and such in the documents I create. It seems that converting to a Word document to a Doc format would strip a lot of that out, making it difficult. I also need to use a lot of Excel files (and files with graphics) so I'm looking for solutions that can handle this. I don't like DataViz too much, but their software seems to be the best approach so far.

BTW, did you find you need to do the same things with the library and user file names needing to be in Japanese? Do you also need to long into a Japanese system to make a sync?

Lang