Chinese input method: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 00:36, 25 May 2004

Revision as of 02:49, 20 June 2004

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Because the [[Chinese language]] is a [[logogram|logographic]] language--&mdash;a language in which one "[[Chinese written language|character]]" corresponds roughly to one "word" or meaning--&mdash;there are vastly more characters, or glyphs, than there are keys on a standard [[computer keyboard]].

A variety of keyboard input methods have been designed to allow the input of Chinese characters using standard keyboards.

To allow the input of Chinese using standard keyboards a variety of keyboard input methods have been designed.

Keyboard input methods can be classified in 3three main types: by encoding, by pronunciation, and by structure of the characters. The following are just some samples of Chinese input methods. Many of those input methods have variations. ''Full Pinyin'' and ''Double Pinyin'' are variationvariations of the Pinyin input method. In addition, the methods which require the user to select a character from a menu generally have sophisticated methods for guessing which characters the user intends based on context.

Different people are most comfortable with different methods and each standard has its strengths and weaknesses. For example, for someone who is already familiar with pinyinPinyin, the pinyinPinyin method can be learned most quickly. However, the maximum typing rate is limited, and learning the system is difficult for some who doesn't know pinyin. ''Wubi'' takes much effort to learn, but expert typists can enter text much faster than the phonetic methods. Because of these factors, there is no likelihood of a "standard" method evolving.

there is no likelihood of a "standard" method evolving.

Other means of inputting Chinese characters are not widely used but include [[stylus]] and [[tablet]], with hand-writing recognition software, as the most common alternative, and then OCR [[optical character recognitionOCR]] (OCR) and voice recognition. As with the [[English language]], all these methods suffer from high error rates.

== Pronunciation ==

* [[Zhuyin]] (&#27880;&#38899;)

* [[Pinyin]] (&#25340;&#38899;)

* [[Cantonese Pinyin]] (&#31908;&#35821;&#25340;&#38899;)

== Character Structure ==

* [[Wubi method]] (&#20116;&#31508;&#23383;&#22411;)

* [[Cangjie method]] (&#20179;&#39049;)

* [[Shouwei method]] (&#39318;&#23614;&#23383;&#22411;)

* [[Zheng code method]] (&#37073;&#30721;)

* [[Dayi method]] (&#22826;&#26131;)

* [[Five Stroke method]] (&#20116;&#31508;&#21010;)

* [[Four corner method]] (&#22235;&#35282;&#30721;)

* [[Stroke Count method]] (&#31508;&#30011;)

== Combination of Pronunciation and Character Structure ==

* [[Tze-loi method]] (&#23376;&#26469;)

* [[Renzhi code method]] (&#35748;&#30693;&#30721;)

== Character Encodings ==

''Main article: [[Chinese character encoding]]''

* [[Big5]]

* [[Guobiao]] (GB)

* [[Neima]] (&#20869;&#30721;)

* [[Unicode]] (&#22269;&#38469;&#21306;&#20301;&#30721;)

* [[Telegraph code]] (&#30005;&#25253;&#30721;)

== Other ==

* [[English-Chinese translation]]

* [[Han unification]]

[[zh-cn:&#20013;&#25991;&#36755;&#20837;&#27861;]]