Wubi Newbie Question (五笔字型)

[tooironic]

OK, so I've got some free time this weekend so I decided to have a knack at learning the wubi zixing (五笔字型) input method.

I've read the first half of the online tutorial, made up some coloured charts to blu-tac to my monitor and downloaded sogou's wubi input software (I love how much you can customise it e.g. you can make it have a massive font - good for my eyes!).

However I'm stuck on one thing. I know for 我 you input TRN, 和 TKG and 你 WQ, but how do I type 我和你 as a complete sentence? I try typing TRNTKGWQ but the software apparently doesn't recognise it automatically like this. Don't tell me I have to press (1) everytime I want to input a single character? Have I missed something?

[imron]

First of all, I would use 极点五笔。It's generally recognised as the best Chinese 五笔 IME. When I last tried Sogou's one its word database for multiple character combinations was poor.

Second of all I would download the typing tutor 五笔快打(note, there are two products available on that page, an IME and 五笔快打 . Make sure you don't download the IME by mistake). You've got a 14 day free trial and the cost is only RMB 25. That 14 days will be enough to decide whether you want to continue using it or not, but it's worth every fen. It makes the learning process that much simpler, because it provides you with lists of different characters to practice split by word group/type, has a keyboard map, a lookup dictionary and a host of other nifty features.

Thirdly, learn your shortcut keys. 我 can be typed with just 'Q', 和 with just 'T' because they are set as the single character shortcut for that key. Each key has a character allocated as a shortcut key. These are usually high frequency characters that match the stroke-type of the key (left falling, right falling etc)

Finally, in answer to your question, yes, you have missed something For character combinations that are less than 4 keystrokes (which are technically shortcut key combinations) you need to press space.

For example, the full code for 我 is TRNT. If you want to shortcut it to only TRN because 我 is the only valid character for that combination, then you need to press space. The same goes for any other key sequence less than 4 characters.

So, to type that sentence using the combinations you provided you would type:

TRNTKGWQ

However, the optimal sequence for typing that phrase would be:

QTWQ

Edited August 15, 2009 at 05:09 AM by imron
forgot link to 极点五笔

[tooironic]

Thanks heaps for your detailed and speedy response. I tried downloading 五笔快打 but when I went to install it the text was all gibberish (encoding problem)... maybe because I'm running Windows Vista (in English)? At any rate, the trial version thing does put me off a bit. Are there any other programs or online flash applications that train beginners to type wubi? Even just online tutorials in English that are more helpful than the one I mentioned in my OP would suffice.

As for 极点五笔, I think I will stick with sogou because, like I said in my OP, you can enlarge it to a huge size (on my big widescreen LCD monitor this makes it 100x easier to use). I couldn't find such an option on jidian wubi though. The supposed lack of character combos I'm not terribly fussed about because I reckon it will be a few months before I'll need 'em anyway! Cheers.

[imron]

Yeah, unfortunately, 五笔快打 is not a unicode aware application. It also has various security measures used for activation that prevent the use of AppLocale, which means that if you want it to run, you will need to set the default encoding for non-unicode applications to Chinese. It is a good program though.

I did find this flash training program here, which seems pretty basic, but which will suffice in a flash (haha).

Turns out it's hosted by the same people doing 极点五笔, which now has a new version (7) in beta (hosted on a completely separate site). You might want to look at that to see if there is an option to increase the font size. You'll actually be using two character combinations sooner than you think, things like 你好， 但是， 可是， 而且， 其实， 等等。