Chinese input methods for computers

An early experimental Chinese radical keyboard using 496 keys for input was developed by researchers of National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan, but was never widely used.[1]

Chinese input methods predate the computer. One of the early attempts was an electro-mechanical Chinese typewriter Ming kwai (Chinese: 明快; pinyin: míngkuài; Wade–Giles: ming-k'uai) which was invented by Lin Yutang, a prominent Chinese writer, in the 1940s. It assigned thirty base shapes or strokes to different keys and adopted a new way of categorizing Chinese characters. But the typewriter was not produced commercially and Lin soon found himself deeply in debt.[2]

Before the 1980s, Chinese publishers hired teams of workers and selected a few thousand type pieces from an enormous Chinese character set. Chinese government agencies entered characters using a long, complicated list of Chinese telegraph codes, which assigned different numbers to each character. During the early computer era, Chinese characters were categorized by their radicals or Pinyin romanization, but results were less than satisfactory.

In the 1970s to 1980s, large keyboards with thousands of keys were used to input Chinese. Each key was mapped to several Chinese characters. To type a character, one pressed the character key and then a selection key.[3][4] There were also experimental "radical keyboards" with dozens to several hundreds keys. Chinese characters were decomposed into "radicals", each of which was represented by a key.[1][5][6] Unwieldy and difficult to use, these keyboards became obsolete after the introduction of Cangjie input method, the first method to use only the standard keyboard and make Chinese touch typing possible.[6]

A typical keyboard layout for the Cangjie method, which is based on the United States keyboard layout

Chu Bong-Foo invented a common input method in 1976 with his Cangjie input method, which assigns different "roots" to each key on a standard computer keyboard. With this method, for example, the character 日 is assigned to the A key, and 月 is assigned to B. Typing them together will result in the character 明 ("bright").

An electronic dictionary with Cangjie keyboard

Despite its steeper learning curve, this method remains popular in Chinese communities that use traditional Chinese characters, such as Hong Kong and Taiwan; the method allows very precise input, thus allowing users to type more efficiently and quickly, provided they are familiar with the fairly complicated rules of the method. It was the first method that allowed users to enter more than a hundred Chinese characters per minute. Its popularity is also helped by its omnipresence on traditional Chinese computer systems, since Chu has given up its patent in 1982, stating that it should be part of the cultural asset. Developers of Chinese systems can adopt it freely, and users do not have the hassle of it being absent on devices with Chinese support.[7][8] Cangjie input programs supporting large CJK character set have been developed.[9][10][11]

All methods have their strengths and weaknesses. The pinyin method can be learned rapidly but its maximum input rate is limited. The Wubi takes longer to learn, but expert typists can enter text much more rapidly with it than with phonetic methods. However, Wubi is proprietary, and a version of it has become freely available only after its inventor lost a patent lawsuit in 1997.[12]

Due to these complexities, there is no "standard" method.

In mainland China, the wubi (shape-based) and pinyin methods such as Sogou Pinyin and Google Pinyin are the most popular; in Taiwan, Cangjie, Dayi, Boshiamy, and zhuyin predominate; and in Hong Kong and Macau, the Cangjie is most often taught in schools, while a few schools teach CKC Chinese Input System.[13]

Other methods include handwriting recognition, OCR and voice recognition. The computer itself must first be "trained" before the first or second of these methods are used; that is, the new user enters the system in a special "learning mode" so that the system can learn to identify their handwriting or speech patterns. The latter two methods are used less frequently than keyboard-based input methods and suffer from relatively high error rates, especially when used without proper "training", though higher error rates are an acceptable trade-off to many users. In recent years, online IME have become more scarce, owing to the proliferation of cellphones and apps.[14]

• Microsoft IME
• Sogou Pinyin
• Google Pinyin

• What Does a Chinese Keyboard Look Like?, article by Slate.com
• Overview of Input Methods, by Sebastien Bruggeman.
• 中文輸入法世界 Chinese input method news.
• The engineering daring that led to the first Chinese personal computer. With 1,000s of Chinese characters and limited memory, inventors of the Sinotype III had to push the limits of early machines. by Tom Mullaney, June 29, 2021, techcrunch.com
• How intensive modding ushered in China’s computer revolution: Early Chinese engineers needed to constantly push against the boundaries of 'alphabetic order,'by Tom Mullaney, October 24, 2021, techcrunch.com
• The computer pioneer who built modern China, By Leila McNeill, 19th February 2020, bbc website.