ĭue to these complexities, there is no "standard" method. However, Wubi is proprietary, and a version of it has become freely available only after its inventor lost a patent lawsuit in 1997. The Wubi takes longer to learn, but expert typists can enter text much more rapidly with it than with phonetic methods. ![]() The pinyin method can be learned rapidly but its maximum input rate is limited. ![]() Īll methods have their strengths and weaknesses. Cangjie input programs supporting large CJK character set have been developed. Developers of Chinese systems can adopt it freely, and users do not have the hassle of it being absent on devices with Chinese support. Its popularity is also helped by its omnipresence on traditional Chinese computer systems, since Chu has given up its patent in 1982, stating that it should be part of the cultural asset. It was the first method that allowed users to enter more than a hundred Chinese characters per minute. Typing them together will result in the character 明 ("bright").Īn electronic dictionary with Cangjie keyboardĭespite its steeper learning curve, this method remains popular in Chinese communities that use traditional Chinese characters, such as Hong Kong and Taiwan the method allows very precise input, thus allowing users to type more efficiently and quickly, provided they are familiar with the fairly complicated rules of the method. With this method, for example, the character 日 is assigned to the A key, and 月 is assigned to B. A typical keyboard layout for the Cangjie method, which is based on the United States keyboard layoutĬhu Bong-Foo invented a common input method in 1976 with his Cangjie input method, which assigns different "roots" to each key on a standard computer keyboard. Unwieldy and difficult to use, these keyboards became obsolete after the introduction of Cangjie input method, the first method to use only the standard keyboard and make Chinese touch typing possible. Chinese characters were decomposed into "radicals", each of which was represented by a key. ![]() There were also experimental "radical keyboards" with dozens to several hundreds keys. To type a character, one pressed the character key and then a selection key. Each key was mapped to several Chinese characters. In the 1970s to 1980s, large keyboards with thousands of keys were used to input Chinese. During the early computer era, Chinese characters were categorized by their radicals or Pinyin romanization, but results were less than satisfactory. Chinese government agencies entered characters using a long, complicated list of Chinese telegraph codes, which assigned different numbers to each character. īefore the 1980s, Chinese publishers hired teams of workers and selected a few thousand type pieces from an enormous Chinese character set. But the typewriter was not produced commercially and Lin soon found himself deeply in debt. It assigned thirty base shapes or strokes to different keys and adopted a new way of categorizing Chinese characters. One of the early attempts was an electro-mechanical Chinese typewriter Ming kwai ( Chinese: 明快 pinyin: míngkuài Wade–Giles: ming-k'uai) which was invented by Lin Yutang, a prominent Chinese writer, in the 1940s. Ĭhinese input methods predate the computer. ![]() History An early experimental Chinese radical keyboard using 496 keys for input was developed by researchers of National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan, but was never widely used. Other methods allow users to write characters directly onto touchscreens, such as those found on mobile phones and tablet computers. Methods under the phonetic category usually are easier to learn but are less efficient, thus resulting in slower typing speeds because they typically require users to choose from a list of phonetically similar characters for input, whereas methods under the root shape category allow very precise and speedy input but have a steep learning curve because they often require a thorough understanding of a character's strokes and composition. Most, if not all, Chinese input methods fall into one of two categories: phonetic readings or root shapes. Chinese input methods for computers are methods that allow a computer user to input Chinese characters.
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