Quick Question - Chinese and Keyboards

[sca_sethe]

What's a good program for inserting Chinese characters through a regular keyboard - using the phoentics that convert into the Chinese script? My friend has been searching for one for over a year now, otherwise I wouldn't have asked without searching first.

Hopefully, this will help out someone else, too, who has a similar question? =3

Thankies!

Comments

[graeco_celt]

If your friend is using Windows, he or she can chnage the default language settings (in the 'control panel' section of the computer), to allow Chinese imput.

That's what I use and all I have to do, when I want to change between the three languages I type in, is click on the little language icon on the toolbar at the bottom of my screen and switch to the langauge I need. It works anywhere (internet, typing in filenames when you save etc), not just in Word.

You just have to type in the pinyin and it will give you a list of characters - you just have to click on the one you want and it automatically inserts it.

[graeco_celt]

Er, INput!

Also, if you don't lknow how to modify your default language settings, let me know and I can explain that.

[sca_sethe]

Ah, I do know how to do that! And that seems quite simple! I'll let my friend know :)

[frances_bea]

It works about the same on a Mac. Go into System Preferences, then International, and choose all the keyboards you want from the Input Menu list. Change keyboards in any program by clicking the flag icon in the upper right or by typing command-space or shift-command-space (shortcut keys configurable).

I like one from the PRC (Simplified Chinese -> ITABC) and one from Taiwan (Traditional Chinese -> Pinyin) though there are other choices. These two are both pinyin entry methods. The PRC one gets confused when I try to offer tone numbers so I end up with more ambiguity and more characters to choose between, but otherwise they're very similar.

[frances_bea]

For Windows users, there's also a Google program some people like which is free for download here: http://www.google.com/ime/pinyin/

I haven't tried it, but I know a lot of people swear by it over Microsoft's bundled tools.

[flamingspinach]

Unfortunately, while you can hack the registry to get Microsoft's IME to accept Dvorak input, I still haven't found a way to do so for Google Pinyin...

[frances_bea]

Egad! Another Dvorak user on the loose!

Seriously, that is a good point, and just goes to show that Google doesn't do everything better than Microsoft. I'm surprised that the hardware solution seems to have faded from popularity. If the keyboard is wired to send the correct signals to the computer then the computer doesn't even have to know where your keys are.

Looking around, it looks like the hardware solutions on the market are few, and pricey. This little adapter seems like a cute solution - for desktop computers, at least:
http://www.keyghost.com/qido/

[flamingspinach]

Nah, hardware isn't the way, IMO. A lot of programs accept keyboard input in a way that is dependent on the physical locations of the keys - for example, a lot of games use wasd, vim uses hjkl, etc., and often they read the scan codes directly and don't let you remap. Moving the Dvorak conversion into hardware doesn't allow you to take advantage of such functionality