Chinese input methods for computers

From Free net encyclopedia

Since the Chinese language uses a logographic script—that is a script where one or two "character" corresponds roughly to one "word" or meaning—there are vastly more characters, or glyphs, than there are keys on a standard computer keyboard. Many early Chinese computers used keyboards with thousands of keys.

Image:Large chinese keyboard.jpg

A variety of keyboard input method editors or IMEs have been designed to allow the input of Chinese characters using standard keyboards.

Keyboard input methods can be classified in three main types:

by encoding
by pronunciation
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 variations 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 Pinyin pronunciation, the Pinyin method can be learned most quickly. However, the maximum typing rate is limited, and learning the system can be difficult for those not already familiar with Pinyin's peculiar letter-sound correspondences. Wubi takes much effort to learn, but expert typists can enter text much faster with it than with the phonetic methods. Because of these factors, there is very little 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 and voice recognition. As with even the most advanced English language systems, all these methods suffer from high error rates, though the error rates are an acceptable tradeoff to many users.

Yet some systems allow Chinese characters to be input by typing their equivalent English words.