hanxue Posted April 11, 2010 at 03:02 AM Report Share Posted April 11, 2010 at 03:02 AM I tried Sougou pinyin input at my friend's PC the other day and it seems pretty neat, but I'm a Mac user so I'm afraid there's no Mac version of it. Is there? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muirm Posted April 11, 2010 at 03:24 AM Report Share Posted April 11, 2010 at 03:24 AM As far as I know Sogou is not available on the Mac. The best pinyin input I have found for Mac is QIM. It isn't free, but it works really well. If you get it be sure to also install their "Intelligent Sentence Generation" database, which greatly improves the sentence/word guessing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hanxue Posted April 11, 2010 at 06:09 AM Author Report Share Posted April 11, 2010 at 06:09 AM Thanks, I just tried it and it seems pretty neat, though it doesn't seem all that much better than the default Mac pinyin input, or am I missing something? (I did install QIT, too.) Also, the "Candidate Palette" seems a bit crammed together (not enough space in between entries and in between the number and the entry), which makes it somewhat inconvenient to quickly spot the phrase you're looking for.... Anything that could be done about that? I've attached some screenshots, the difference is quite apparent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muirm Posted April 11, 2010 at 03:48 PM Report Share Posted April 11, 2010 at 03:48 PM You can adjust some setting with the candidate palette like number of candidates per row, font size, and some other stuff, but I'm not sure those would help with crammedness. By not much better than default Mac IME, do you mean the candidates are not as good, or the interface isn't improved? Did you enable QIT in the preferences? I can't remember if it does it for you or not. There are tons of preferences for QIM, with lots of options for custom input codes and dictionaries, and a bunch of other stuff I don't really understand. If you like that sort of customizability, you can play around with that stuff too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hanxue Posted April 12, 2010 at 06:01 AM Author Report Share Posted April 12, 2010 at 06:01 AM (edited) Yeah, I've already played around with font/font size and number of candidates. It's neat that you can choose any font you want! By not much better than the default Mac pinyin input I meant the candidates, yeah, for example when I typed mingchao (明朝) it actually didn't show up in QIM, yet it did in the default Mac pinyin... It's kind of odd that something as common as Ming dynasty wouldn't show up?! Btw, I've e-mailed the developer and he said he's releasing v. 1.9 next month and it will apparently have a different candidate palette that will supposedly not be as crammed as it currently is... Edited April 12, 2010 at 02:11 PM by jon09 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liuxht Posted April 12, 2010 at 02:42 PM Report Share Posted April 12, 2010 at 02:42 PM You can try Sougou online Cloud pinyin input. Having a look at this: http://pinyin.sogou.com/cloud/ firefox plugin: http://pinyin.sogou.com/cloud/ff.html Java script: javascript:void((function(){var%20e=document.createElement('script');e.setAttribute('src','http://web.pinyin.sogou.com/web_ime/init.js');document.body.appendChild(e);})()) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hanxue Posted April 12, 2010 at 03:00 PM Author Report Share Posted April 12, 2010 at 03:00 PM I already tried the Firefox plugin before, but it's not really useful for me since I rarely use FF... What I need is a pinyin input that I can use anywhere I want - whether it be in my browser, Word, MSN, anything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liuxht Posted April 13, 2010 at 12:13 PM Report Share Posted April 13, 2010 at 12:13 PM Hmm, the only mac pinyin input method i know is Fun Input Toy(FIT), it's not as good as Sougou pinyin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hanxue Posted April 15, 2010 at 10:01 AM Author Report Share Posted April 15, 2010 at 10:01 AM Now that I've used QIM for a couple of days and have used up my 10000 hanzi trial, I can say it is indeed quite a bit more convenient than the default Mac pinyin input system! Still not on a par with Sougou, but probably the closest it will get to it on Mac. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imron Posted April 16, 2010 at 05:05 AM Report Share Posted April 16, 2010 at 05:05 AM Now that I've used QIM for a couple of days and have used up my 10000 hanzi tria10,000 hanzi in a couple of days? What were you typing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hanxue Posted April 16, 2010 at 10:14 AM Author Report Share Posted April 16, 2010 at 10:14 AM Well, I used the pinyin input for all things related to Chinese - chatting, looking up vocabs etc etc. It's not that hard to reach 10,000.. ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hanxue Posted April 19, 2010 at 08:13 AM Author Report Share Posted April 19, 2010 at 08:13 AM So I liked the input so much that I bought a license! I asked the developer what the new version will bring, and this is what he replied: "The main updates in 1.9 is bundle with Sogou ( A famous Chinese Pinyin input methods on Windows ) supports. IMKQIM will support Sogou cell dictionary, skins and online dictionary update." Sounds good Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
creamyhorror Posted April 20, 2010 at 06:22 AM Report Share Posted April 20, 2010 at 06:22 AM Well, I used the pinyin input for all things related to Chinese - chatting, looking up vocabs etc etc. It's not that hard to reach 10,000.. ;) Wow, I don't think I type 6,000 words in two weeks in English (rough conversion), my first language. But I don't really chat/IM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
engrafted Posted April 21, 2010 at 05:56 AM Report Share Posted April 21, 2010 at 05:56 AM I'll buy it as soon as that update is out. It sounds like it'll be almost as good as Sougou! That makes me very happy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tooironic Posted August 30, 2011 at 01:09 AM Report Share Posted August 30, 2011 at 01:09 AM As mentioned in the other post, Sogou has now released a version for Mac. Yay! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tooironic Posted August 30, 2011 at 01:22 AM Report Share Posted August 30, 2011 at 01:22 AM OK I've got it installed, and I can change the skins, but it looks like I can't change the font size like I can in the Windows version. Does anyone know if this can be done? I'm looking on their website for "big"-fontsize skins, but so far not much luck. Well I found this one and the font size is large enough I guess. You might think I'm strange for being so obsessed with this, but squinting at Chinese characters all day gives my eyes the worst strain. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imron Posted August 30, 2011 at 01:24 AM Report Share Posted August 30, 2011 at 01:24 AM I don't think you can. It's rather lacking in configuration options. QIM however does allow you to change the font size. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hanxue Posted August 30, 2011 at 07:53 AM Author Report Share Posted August 30, 2011 at 07:53 AM Yeah, QIM does allow it and is quite more configurable than Sogou... The latter is currently only good for typing in simplified characters, and the sad thing is the developers don't seem to give a damn about the user feedback. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tooironic Posted October 25, 2011 at 12:52 PM Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 at 12:52 PM Oh I only just realised that Mac's default Chinese input can allow you to increase the character size and orientation - not bad! I think I'll just use that one now, Sogou doesn't really seem worth it now... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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