marcoppe Posted September 28, 2009 at 12:17 PM Report Posted September 28, 2009 at 12:17 PM Hi all, I am looking to keep up my Chinese characters writing skills and trying not to forget them. Everyday I write my blog or emails in Chinese to my PRC friends by inputting pinyin to get the character. This however does not help me to keep or increase my handwriting and characters memorization skills. I believe the best solution would be to have a software with handwriting recognition capabilities. It could work by having an electronic pen on a touch pad (like the one used on Mac for precision graphics). Whatever is written and recognized it will be visualized on a word-type format in mandarin. Does anybody know if anything like this exists?? Please help! Marco Quote
choisum Posted September 28, 2009 at 01:21 PM Report Posted September 28, 2009 at 01:21 PM Don't know about Mac, but plenty around for Windows: http://www.yesasia.com/global/penpower-crystal-junior-handwriter-white/1004777244-0-0-0-en/info.html http://www.yesasia.com/global/penpower-handwriter-standard-version-403/1005101266-0-0-0-en/info.html You can find them in most computer shops here in Hong Kong, they probably do Simplified (I've not tried though...) And I think there are cheaper versions of the Crystal pad in the shops. Anyway, you can always ask your PRC friends too, the generic name for these things are 手寫板 Alternatively, if you already have a pad that simulates a mouse, you can try the Windows handwriting recognizer -- it's under the Traditional Chinese IME. Click on the IME and there is a very (unrecognizable) icon for the handwriting recognition. Unfortunately there isn't one under the PRC IME, so you'll have to play around to see if it will do Simplified. (Just test with the mouse) Quote
889 Posted September 28, 2009 at 02:02 PM Report Posted September 28, 2009 at 02:02 PM Wenlin also has a writing pad, though I don't think it works as well as the Windows IME pad. Quote
jbradfor Posted September 28, 2009 at 02:27 PM Report Posted September 28, 2009 at 02:27 PM Were you asking about the hardware or software side of this? For software, the web site skritter seems popular, but it's a web site, so you'll need to be connected to the internet to use it. Quote
imron Posted September 28, 2009 at 11:28 PM Report Posted September 28, 2009 at 11:28 PM If you have a Mac with a multi-touch mousepad, upgrade to Snow Leopard, it has built-in handwriting recognition. You might also consider learning 五笔字型, which is an input method that uses shapes instead of pinyin, and helps you remember how a character is written. Quote
glock Posted October 11, 2009 at 11:30 AM Report Posted October 11, 2009 at 11:30 AM You could buy a 手写板 It's quite useful. should be around 25 元. For those who live in Beijing it can be bought at 中关村 Quote
marcoppe Posted October 11, 2009 at 03:41 PM Author Report Posted October 11, 2009 at 03:41 PM (edited) Thank you all for the help. I looked on youa.baidu.com and they really have many of these products that I would not know where to begin from. There are some from 30RMB to 3000RMB. In the meantime, I saw the IME Pad capability of MS Word, and it would be great if only worked in tranditional mandarin, but characters like 为，欢，etc. So, I guess I will have to use the software provided by the product I will buy to use simplified 汉字. Thanks a lot, Marco Edited October 11, 2009 at 04:08 PM by marcoppe Quote
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