ATOK (; ) is a

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

input method editor An input method (or input method editor, commonly abbreviated IME) is an operating system component or program that enables users to generate characters not natively available on their input devices by using sequences of characters (or mouse ope ...

(IME) produced by

JustSystems is a Japanese software development house. The company's main products were a word processor, Ichitaro (word processor), Ichitaro ("JohnnyOne"), a Japanese input method, ATOK. In 2010s, they focus on correspondence education and enterprise softwa ...

, a Japanese software company. ATOK is an IME with roots from KTIS (

Kana are syllabary, syllabaries used to write Japanese phonology, Japanese phonological units, Mora (linguistics), morae. In current usage, ''kana'' most commonly refers to ''hiragana'' and ''katakana''. It can also refer to their ancestor , wh ...

Kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are ...

Transfer Input System) come with JS-WORD, the Japanese word processor software for PC-100 in 1983, but it now supports a variety of platforms including

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

, Android, and

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

. Once ATOK meant ''Automatic Transfer Of Kana-kanji''. Now, it means ''Advanced Technology Of Kana-kanji Transfer''. It is occasionally taken to stand for '' Awa-

TOKushima is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located on the island of Shikoku. Tokushima Prefecture has a population of 682,439 (1 February 2025) and has a geographic area of 4,146 Square kilometre, km2 (1,601 sq mi). Tokushima Prefecture b ...

'', site of the headquarters of JustSystems, or ''Alphabet TO Kanji.''

Functions

Functions vary between versions for different platforms, and the following list is not exhaustive. * Search

kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are ...

from phonetic input – both using

romaji The romanization of Japanese is the use of Latin script to write the Japanese language. This method of writing is sometimes referred to in Japanese as . Japanese is normally written in a combination of logogram, logographic characters borrowe ...

keyboard and

kana are syllabary, syllabaries used to write Japanese phonology, Japanese phonological units, Mora (linguistics), morae. In current usage, ''kana'' most commonly refers to ''hiragana'' and ''katakana''. It can also refer to their ancestor , wh ...

keyboard. * Search kanji by

radical Radical (from Latin: ', root) may refer to: Politics and ideology Politics *Classical radicalism, the Radical Movement that began in late 18th century Britain and spread to continental Europe and Latin America in the 19th century *Radical politics ...

. * Drawing pad for handwriting recognition. * Reverse retrieval of phonetic input – both to

kunyomi is the way of reading kanji characters using the native Japanese word that matches the meaning of the Chinese character when it was introduced. This pronunciation is contrasted with ''on'yomi'', which is the reading based on the original Chi ...

and

onyomi , or the Sino-Japanese reading, is the reading of a kanji based on the historical Chinese pronunciation of the character. A single kanji might have multiple ''on'yomi'' pronunciations, reflecting the Chinese pronunciations of different period ...

. * Text templates for standard phrases, address labels and Japanese

emoticon An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for emotion icon, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using Character (symbol), characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers and Alphabet, letters—to express a person's feelings, mood ...

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 and

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

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.

Versions

the latest version for Windows is 31.1.6; for macOS, 31.0.3; for iOS, 1.6.2; and for Android, 1.8.15. They are available via the ATOK Passport subscription and an annual subscription which comes with Ichitaro.

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

OS/2 OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, ...

Palm OS Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) is a discontinued mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. ...

Pocket PC A Pocket PC (P/PC, PPC) is a class of personal digital assistant (PDA) that runs the Windows Mobile operating system, which is based on Windows Embedded Compact, Windows CE/Windows Embedded Compact, and that has some of the abilities of modern ...

, and

Windows CE Windows CE, later known as Windows Embedded CE and Windows Embedded Compact, is a discontinued operating system developed by Microsoft for mobile and embedded devices. It was part of the Windows Embedded family and served as the software foun ...

are no longer supported. KTIS and ATOK was originally a component of JustSystems' word processor software. Ichitaro released in 1985 allowed the use of ATOK 4 in other MS-DOS applications of the

PC-98 The , commonly shortened to PC-98 or simply , is a lineup of Japanese 16-bit and 32-bit Personal computer, personal computers manufactured by NEC from 1982 to 2003. While based on Intel processors, it uses an in-house architecture making it inc ...

platform. ATOK 7 was bundled with Ichitaro 4, and was available as a standalone product in 1992. In DOS era, ATOK was spreading with Ichitaro despite competition from VJE, Matsutake, and some other software.

Windows 3.1 Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series run as a shell on top of MS-DOS; it was the last Windows 1 ...

, the first retail version of Japanese Windows, bundled the Microsoft IME (MS-IME) input method. MS-IME 97 contained notable improvements, and was bundled with a new retail box of

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...

and Office 97. The difference between ATOK and MS-IME went smaller. In 2008, JustSystems began a subscription service, ATOK Passport. ATOK 2017 was the last version to be physically shipped as boxed software.

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

chose ATOK as their input method when running under the JP locale in

Solaris 10 Oracle Solaris is a proprietary Unix operating system offered by Oracle for SPARC and x86-64 based workstations and servers. Originally developed by Sun Microsystems as Solaris, it superseded the company's earlier SunOS in 1993 and became kno ...

and above, enhancing Sun's already strong Japanese language support. For embedded systems, JustSystems has developed +ATOK. Some Japanese

mobile phone A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This rad ...

s, PDAs,

video game console A video game console is an electronic device that Input/output, outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can typically be played with a game controller. These may be home video game console, home consoles, which are generally ...

s ( PSP,

PS3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE). It is the successor to the PlayStation 2, and both are part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. The PS3 was first released on ...

and

Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America, and in December 2006 for most other regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major home game console, f ...

digital video recorder A digital video recorder (DVR), also referred to as a personal video recorder (PVR) particularly in Canadian and British English, is an electronic device that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card, SS ...

automotive navigation system An automotive navigation system is part of the automobile controls or a third party add-on used to find direction in an automobile. It typically uses a satellite navigation device to get its position data which is then correlated to a position on ...

s come with +ATOK.

References

External links

* {{Input method Japanese writing system Japanese-language computing CJK input methods Linux text editors Solaris software Unix text editors

Functions

Versions

See also

References

External links