Candidate window in mac osx leopard

[Peng]

Few days ago, I installed Leopard. I checked Japanese and Simplified Chinese input methods, they are fine. But I tested Traditional Chinese input method (Pinyin) by typing some pinyin word, the candidate window never show up. I checked the preference and found nothing.

Is there a way to solve this problem?

[imron]

Install a better input method. Both QIM and FIT output traditional characters, and have far better functionality than the default IMEs.

[russmeier]

你好！

I wish I could offer suggestions but I just wanted to let you know it is not a universal leopard problem. Both Traditional (pinyin) and Simplified (itabc) inputs worked for me out of the box!

Good luck.

Russ Meier

Milwaukee WI, USA

[lilongyue]

You can also try OpenVanilla (http://openvanilla.org/). Not perfect, but already compatible with 10.5. Also has a few nice features, like simplified-traditional, and vice versa. So, you type the pinyin, it shows the simplified, and when you select the character, it displays the traditional. The pop-up box with the choice of charcters is large and easy to read. Oh yeah, it also totally free, so you can try it out.

Not using 10.5 yet, but been using OpenVanilla for several months now, and it does most things I need. The help files on their websites are in traditional Chinese, so I have a few unanswered questions, but then again haven't tried posting and asking (in English) yet either. So far only main complaint is that it doesn't seem to learn the same way that Microsoft's IME does. But I think it has that functonality, I just don't know how to use it.

[dsrguru]

Sorry to revive a somewhat old thread, but the Pinyin TCIM (traditional Chinese input method) in Leopard actually works much better than in Tiger. I'd say it's just as good as QIM, and it's included with the OS. There is no candidate window on purpose because the input method editor (IME) works just like the ITABC input method (Tiger and Leopard) for simplified hanzi. You can type an entire sentence of Pinyin without tone numbers or spaces (e.g. wohenxihuanshuoputonghua) and then hit the space bar. When you first start using the IME, it will sometimes guess the wrong characters. When that happens, backspace and choose a different character. The software's algorithm adapts the way it makes guesses each time you tell it that you meant a different character. It will become very accurate after a week or so, and it's certainly faster than having a candidate window from which you have to choose every single character.

In addition, the Pinyin TCIM allows you optionally to append tone numbers to syllables, which ITABC does not allow. If you wanted to input 媽, for example, you could just type ma, but then the IME would probably choose the wrong character because it doesn't have other syllables to use as context. You can type ma1 instead, and the IME will choose 媽. ITABC for simplified and Leopard's Pinyin for traditional are, like Microsoft's IME, the closest thing to Wubizixing and Cangjie in terms of typing speed, and they're certainly easier to learn.

[imron]

The problem with the default input methods is that you can't see the characters that they're going to choose until the end of your sentence, and even then you still have to "confirm" each one by pressing the space bar. For example, if I type woxihuanshuoputonghua, then once finished, I then have to press space once for the 我, once for the 喜欢, once for the 说 and once for the 普通话. This is significantly slower than (recent versions of) QIM which even though it has a candidate window, also has advanced sentence prediction and most of the time it will get the complete sentence correct so you never need to choose any candidate except the first one (it also learns what you type, so that percentage will also improve over time). So, in QIM, when I type woxihuanshuoputonghua then the candiate window shows 我喜欢说普通话 and I just press space once to confirm the whole sentence.

The same is true if I wanted to type something longer, e.g. jintianzhongguogongchandangdishiqijiezhongyangweiyuanhuidierciquantihuiyizaibeijingzhaokai

in the QIM candidate window, I get:

今天中国共产党第十七届中央委员会第二次全体会议在北京召开

One space, and it's all there. Typing that using the default OSX input methods is painful (and in fact in tiger, it doesn't even let me type a sentence that long).

ITABC for simplified and Leopard's Pinyin for traditional are, like Microsoft's IME, the closest thing to Wubizixing and Cangjie in terms of typing speed

You need to try a few more modern IMEs, because Microsoft's IME (and the default OSX ones) don't really count as state of the art. They were left behind ages ago by the likes of Sougou and Google (incidentally, the new versions of QIM, use the Sougou dictionary for sentence prediction). In addition, even if you are typing in a modern pinyin IME using shuangpin instead of quanpin, it still doesn't come close speed-wise to Wubi, because with pinyin methods, (assuming you also care about accuracy), there is always a proof-reading stage where even if the IME guessed the full sentence correctly, you still need to read it over just to make sure. Wubi essentially does away with the need for this, which ends up making quite a difference when comparing sustained typing speeds over a longer period of time (say 10 mins).

[dsrguru]

imron, you're absolutely right that phonetic (pinyin or zhuyin) IMEs don't come close in speed to wubi and cangjie because the proofreading stage precludes the ability to touch-type. However, ITABC and Leopard's version of Pinyin are not as slow as you make them out to be. It's true that the first time you type woxihuanshuoputonghua, you have to hit space for each word (我, 喜欢, and 普通话), but the IME learns so that the next time the whole sentence will come up at once. Although now that I'm playing with it, I realize that the sentence has to be exactly the same (not even woxihuanshuoyingwen or wohenxihuanshuoputonghua) in order for the IME to remember the desired characters for the complete sentence. That's not so good. Your description of QIM does sound a lot better indeed. Of the free IMEs and those included with the OS, though, I still recommend ITABC and the Leopard version of Pinyin over OpenVanilla and the likes because slow sentence auto-completion is better than none. OpenVanilla requires you to choose every character by hand from the candidate window. So in terms of Peng's original question, the new Pinyin IME is better than the old one.

Wait, QIM appears to be donationware now. Is that true? In the past, you had to register or use the limited demo version. That's awesome if it's true. If so, I'll switch right away. Hehe, so much for my initially defensive post. Edit: Never mind, I am not sure what gave me that I idea, but I was wrong.

[imron]

As far as I'm aware, QIM still requires US $20 to register, but there is a long trial period ( 10,000 words I think). If you are looking for a free input method, then FIT is my favourite and IMO better than the default IMEs. It will also do full sentence prediction (but with mistakes for long/complicated sentences), and first choices in the candidate window will be words or word groups, making it no slower (and often faster) than the default IME (in addition both QIM and FIT remember the sentences you've already typed, and make them the first choice if you type them again).

Also, one important factor to consider is not the best case scenario (i.e. when the IME gets everything correct) but rather the non-optimal cases (e.g. when the IME guesses the wrong word). With the default IME you need to first press space to convert from pinyin, then you need to press backspace to bring up the candidate list, and then you need to press the number. With FIT (or QIM without advanced sentence prediction) then in 99% of all cases all you need to do is press the number 2 (or 3 or 4) instead of the number 1, that is, it doesn't have a significant impact on the speed of confirming character choices.

Another case is when you make a typo with the pinyin (it happens from time to time), e.g. you type woxihuanshouputonghua. With the default input method, you might not find out about the typo until you've already typed the whole sentence and possibly even approved several characters already. Changing the typo can be a pain and often involves canceling all (or a part) of the input, and typing it again.

With QIM or FIT, you it's displaying possible choices as you type, making it easy to spot and correct typos straight away.

IMO, the default IMEs for OSX are more or less 2 generations behind the current state of the art, and really aren't the best choice for typing Chinese on a Mac.

[dsrguru]

Okay, thanks. FIT seems good. Actually, it seems almost identical in appearance to QIM. Unfortunately, my Chinese isn't good enough to navigate the drop-down menu and the preferences window. I figured out how to turn on full-width punctuation, traditional mode, and the ability to press shift for Roman letters, but what other features are there in that preferences window? I'm using version 1.5.10 on Tiger by the way. Also, is it possible to hide the FIT menu at the top of the screen? I tried removing FIT from my login items in System Preferences, but that made the IME stop working until I put it back. Thanks.

[imron]

Personally, I think QIM's interface is a little nicer, plus FIT doesn't have advanced sentence prediction for pinyin, but out of the free options FIT is an easy winner. FIT also supports Wubi, which is the main reason I use it.

I haven't really played around with many of the other options. There are some settings there to use "fuzzy" pinyin (to make it easier for people from southern areas who say si instead of shi etc), as well as using shuangpin instead of quanpin, and then also another section for Wubi.

I don't think there's a way to make the status icon disappear.