2012/3/26 Hin-Tak Leung <ht...@users.sourceforge.net>: > Cheer Xiao wrote: > <snipped> > >>> I'm sure that's all true, but why would making Win32 input methods run >>> through Wine be a better (or even easier) solution than improving the >>> Linux/X11 input methods? >> >> >> (I'm talking about Chinese, but the same is true for Japanese.) >> >> Because developing a decent pinyin (it's a romanization scheme of >> Chinese; see my previous mail) IME is very hard. Yes, there are >> alternative input methods that is easier to implement, but the >> majority of the population won't bother to learn. Determined by the >> complexity of Chinese grammar, a decent pinyin IME would require a >> large corpse of vocabulary, driven by some statistical algorithm. > > <snipped> > > I think you are describing the situation wrongly, in quite a few ways. > Implementing pinyin *itself* is trivial - there is a standard-ish > pronounciation, etc, and is completely table-driven. That's how most of > Linux/X11's Chinese input method, especially pinyin, works. > > What you are describing is the desirability of predictive and phrasal input > methods in general, where the computer can anticipate and guess your > intention as you type. >
We only disagree in the definition of what a "decent" IME is. By decent I meant a decent phrasal or sentence IME. Because given the large amount of homophones in Chinese a bare pinyin IME is barely usable. > For what it is worth, you are forgetting two entire "areas" of people. > Taiwan/Hong Kong had always been far more computer-literate than Mainland, > so your "80% won't bother to learn another" is a gross mis-statement in both > quantity and quality. Due to different dialects and other reasons, Cangjie > (rather than Pinyin) had been far more popular with Chinese users. But even > with Cangjie (which is shape/writing-based, rather than sound-based, thus > getting around the dialect problem), predictive and phrasal input methods > are desirable. > I declared that I was talking about the situation in mainland China in the beginning - I should have emphasized that along the way. But by declaring Cangjie is far more popular, you are ignoring the mass majority of people in mainland China. Again, I won't be able to convince you that the majority won't bother to learn another IME, even in highly computer-literate places like CS departments in universities. Arguing about facts is plainly meaningless. > Over 10 years ago, I had some on-line discussion on emacs-devel, with Mr RMS > no less, about my continued interests and compiler problems with emacs 19 > (?) despite emacs 21 being around, which had mule [multi-lingual extension] > newly added (or some issue of that vintage). The reason was that I could run > emacs 19 inside cxterm (a chinese x terminal). Now the curious thing is that > emacs actually took *all* the input methods from cxterm! So Pinyin/Cangjie > themselves worked 10+ years ago identically under emacs 19 + cxterm, and > emacs 21 mule. > Yes, but "just works" is not the same thing as "usable". > What emacs did not, and still does not, implement, which cxterm did even > almost 20 years ago, was predictive and phrasal inputs and also fuzzy > inputs. i.e. you can type "a?b", and get the list of "a[a-z]b". That was > something done almost 20 years ago which is still missing in many of the > modern Chinese X11 input mechanisms. > > (I have a confession to make - cxterm was orphaned for many years, and I and > a few others are who kept it going-ish, in recent years, for what little > needs to be done). -- Regards, Cheer Xiao aka. xiaq