Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!ucbvax!hplabs!hpda!hpdslab!hpiacla!scottg
From: scottg@hpiacla.HP.COM (Scott Gulland)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: Chinese character input scheme -- call for references
Message-ID: <130001@hpiacla.HP.COM>
Date: 16 Dec 88 02:25:52 GMT
References: <789@wasatch.UUCP>
Organization: HP Indus. Appl. Center, Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 47

/ hpiacla:comp.editors / thomson@wasatch.UUCP (Rich Thomson) / 12:58 am  Dec 13, 1988 /
> I'm interested in a scheme for entering Chinese characters via a keyboard.
> I've come up with the idea on my own, but the scheme seems obvious.  So
> ovious that I imagine someone has already implemented it.

> The basic problem is to design a user interface for input of Chinese
> characters in a fashion that is analogous to the writing of the character
> as a sequences of strokes.  There are 24 different basic strokes that I
> know of for Chinese calligraphy, although there may be more.
> 
> When someone writes a Chinese character, the basic strokes are always written
> in accordance with a set of rules (left to right, top to bottom, etc).  The
> sequence of basic strokes comprising a character is consistent from person
> to person.  Similarly, when printing the letter 'h', we are always taught to
> draw the stem '|' first, and then the tail to complete the letter.
> 
> The user interface for input of the character should use the stroke
> information (encoded on a key, for instance) in combination with the order
> of the strokes to uniquely identify a given Chinese character, or perhaps
> learn a new character.  The Roman alphabet equivalent is already
> implemented in real-time spelling checker/completion programs that
> currently run on many machines.
> 
> I believe that this is a most natural scheme for entering the characters as
> it mimics the act of writing the character calligraphically.  This means
> the user need only adapt their current method of writing characters for
> machine input.  Similar to learning to type English words by pressing
> sequences of letter keys in conjunction with the SHIFT key.
> 
> There is also the subtle issue of size in conjunction with the stroke type
> and sequence.  The same stroke appears in many different characters but of
> different sizes, so the user must be provided some fashion of adjusting the
> size of the stroke to fit the character; perhaps an ALT, SHIFT or META key
> can serve to identify this modifier to the stroke.
> 
> Given this type of a scheme, does anyone know of any implementations of
> similar character entry systems, possibly for Japanese or other oriental
> character sets?  Are there any journals (again, possibly Japanese) devoted
> to the problem of oriental native language I/O?  Any references to
> articles, journals, books, programs, etc., would be greatly appreciated.

HP has offered full KANJI support for quite a number of years.  KANJI is used
in Japan and consist of approximately 30,000-50,000 ideograms.   Rather than
using a keystroke approach as given above (highly impractical), a very special
terminal is employed.  This terminal allows any of the 30K-50K ideograms to 
be entered with a single keystroke.  Note that each character in the KANJI 
languague is represented by 16-bits.