Have you seen this bar before?

[Tsrwedge]

I've started getting it when I use CTRL+L for linkshell chat. It looks like a language bar to me. Does anyone know what this bar actually is and/or how to use it?

Thanks in advance, and apologies for the poor quality - cell phone camera.

[Feba]

Re: Have you seen this bar before?

It is a language bar. basically, it's a known glitch, has been for years, and SE will probably never fix it since it does absolutely nothing.

It only works in mod'd or JP clients, but if you were using either of those, you wouldn't have to ask.

[Susurrus]

Re: Have you seen this bar before?

It's for IME which lets you type in Japanese.

ＪＰＯＮＲＹ (or via using plugin on windower)

[Lunaryn]

Re: Have you seen this bar before?

I've heard about this becoming available in the NA client in certain circumstances, but it's locked in "Off" and thus doesn't actually let you control input.

That said, it's not that hard to get the JP client going if you want to play with it. The Windower IME plugin guide is actually a fairly good resource for setting your computer up to support the actual JP client, and there's some other forum threads around describing how to fix up the registry settings on JP POL to get it to see NA FFXI (literally just adding the same key from NA POL that identifies the install directory to JP POL's section)

[Kittyneko]

Re: Have you seen this bar before?

I've heard about this becoming available in the NA client in certain circumstances, but it's locked in "Off" and thus doesn't actually let you control input.

Let me explain that a little bit further. Anyone that has ever (fully) installed Japanese can tell very well what this is, and that it's completely useless to use with any western or european language.

Windows users, i'm sure you know the little language bar next to your tray bar. Well, you can switch to several languages.. such as DE, US, EN and so on, depending on which language's you have installed. Well, normally with any of those language settings you only see two icons, the "EN" and a keyboard icon. If you switch to "JP" (after having properly installed it), several other icons appear as you can see in the pic posted in the original post, that do not give any advantages, they're just used to switch between several writing styles and what not. I personally don't know everything exactly, even though I have it installed. For example, if you were to click on the "A" icon, you can select several writing styles such as Hiragana, Katagana, alphanummeric (which looks like our own letters, but in a way that it's noticably not "typical" western) and so on. That's all it's used for and I can make a picture of those settings later today if anyone is interested.

If you know all this, I'm sure you can figure out why those icons appear in FFXI, as glitch or not. Either way, they're nothing special for us.

Oh, and on a side note. You can't solely use the JP client to play with it, it would continue to be useless for you untill you've installed Japanese language pack on your PC. You can't write Hiragana if your PC doesn't know any.

By the way: If your PC can read Hiragana, doesn't mean he can also write them!

If you want to install this, which actually shouldn't be interesting to the most of us :p, you can ask for more info on how to install everything correctly in the appropriate part of the forum.
Also, if you Google the keywords "JP Language Windows", the top result on Page 2 will lead you to a good tutorial.