Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!ucdavis!deneb.ucdavis.edu!kinmonthprep
From: kinmonthprep@deneb.ucdavis.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Chinese character input scheme -- call for references
Keywords: Chinese characters
Message-ID: <3382@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>
Date: 14 Dec 88 04:30:51 GMT
References: <789@wasatch.UUCP>
Sender: uucp@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu
Reply-To: kinmonthprep@deneb.ucdavis.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth)
Organization: University of California, Davis
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In article <789@wasatch.UUCP> thomson@wasatch.utah.edu.UUCP (Rich Thomson) writes:
>[ Please excuse the large newsgroup list, but also note that follow-ups are
>  directed to comp.graphics. ]
>
>I'm interested in a scheme for entering Chinese characters via a keyboard.

First, before you invent a wheel that has already been
invented, why not look at some of the commercial word
processors that are available for Chinese and Japanese.

Even before you do that, think about your terminology.
Chinese characters for Chinese are one thing, characters of
(largely) Chinese origin used in Japanese are another.

>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

If you had done a little research you would know that there
are a variety of methods already in use for "Chinese"
characters ranging from entering raw HEX codes to fairly
sophisticated context analysis schemes using rudimentary AI
techniques.

Japanese vendors have experimented with a variety of
techniques including pressure sensitive tablets, stroke
classification schemes, etc.

A few of these are discussed in J. Marshall Unger, The
Fifth Generation Fallacy: Why Japan is Betting Its Future
on Artificial Intelligence (Oxford University Press, 1987).
Overall, this is a shallow book, but it does describe some
of the techniques use to handle characters in ENGLISH. To
learn more, pick up the technical manuals for commercial
Japanese word processors.

Overall, Japanese seems best handled by table lookup from
romanized input. Of course, characters are only a fraction
of the symbols needed for writing Japanese. I make this
generalization based on experimentation with a number of
input techniques, but the best argument for it is that it
is what people are buying in Japan. Every Japanese
manufacturer seems to have tried a proprietary input
scheme, but the one that users seem to prefer is
translation from romaji.

[much cut]