Of Links and Kana

I sometimes use Links on various computers when I can’t be bothered to deal with a full graphical environment and just want to look something up. Given I also try to ensure that this site renders in an acceptable manner in text-only mode, Links is indispensable at times.

Now imagine my surprise when I discovered that Links will try to transliterate Japanese kana (a general term for the scripts in which characters correspond to syllables, rather than more abstract ideas such as in kanji) to some extent.

Links romanizing some kana on this page.
Examine the page header and title readout at upper-right.

In that shot, Links has translated the kana in my page’s header to a reasonable romanization- the pronounciation of those characters would be Tari, as in the beginnings of ’tan’ and ‘return’. I don’t know if that was a recent feature (I’m currently running Links 2.3pre1), but it was a pleasant surprise to see it romanizing kana.