Kana is the short word for Hiragana and Katakana and includes both charsets. Kana was created out of Kanji, the chinese charset, and is therefore a simplified version of Kanji.
Romaji (=roman charset) is the japanese language in a readable format for those who can't read japanese characters. Romaji is not commonly used in Japan, but kids learn it in school, together with english. But is is not a english translation of japanese langauage! It's still japanese, written with roman characters. If you want to learn japanese, forget Romaji. You'll not really learn the language with it. :) Katakana is mainly used for foreign words or names. Hiragana is the traditional charset, which is also learned by children at first, followed by Kanji later. Hiragana is sometimes used as a reading help for Kanji, then this is called Furigana, which is either placed on top or right of Kanji characters, depending on the direction of the text (see also http://mosquito.dyndns.tv/~spock/furi/). I think this is what the TS is talking about. -- <http://forum.pspad.com/read.php?2,51453,56558> PSPad freeware editor http://www.pspad.com
