wubizixing stroke types

[neurosport]

so far the only page on wubizixing that i've seen is this:

http://www.yale.edu/chinesemac/wubi/xing.html

but i am getting the feeling that there is more to the way different strokes are laid out on the keyboard. the stroke itself is a concept that is well developed and there seems to be some kind of logic as to why very similar strokes can map to different keys for different characters - what is that logic ? is there any information about this ?

[imron]

That page you linked to above is really the best English source of how to learn Wubi. I can't think of another.

Do you have an example of which strokes you mean? (actually, strokes is a bit misleading, Wubizixing is all about shapes).

In my understanding, for each of the 5 pens, there are 5 keys (numbered 1-5). The shapes that appear on a given pen then get more complex/contain more strokes as the key number increases (e.g. 1 contains simpler shapes, 5 contains more complex shapes etc).

So, for the horizontal pen, you have 一 on key 1 (G), 二 on key 2 (F), 三 on key three (D), whereas on the vertical pen you have 丨 on key 1 (H), 刂 on key 2 (J), 川 on key 3 (K). Most of the other pens have shapes that follow a similar sort of logic.

Of course it's all very general, rule-of-thumb. The layout was also designed to try and ensure the minimum number of character clashes for a given key sequence, so I imagine the above principle was ignored in places when necessary to reduce a key combination clash with another character.

[Altair]

Do you have an example of which strokes you mean? (actually, strokes is a bit misleading, Wubizixing is all about shapes)

I would say that this is true of the arrangements of the character roots, but not for the process of breaking down characters. These two things follow a different logic in Wubizixing, although they seem similar. As imron says,

The layout was also designed to try and ensure the minimum number of character clashes for a given key sequence...

This means that the layout is logical in only a very superficial way. The same can be said of the one letter abbreviations. I found that the 5-stroke logic was a good start, but then I had to use mnemonics, and then a good amount of practice and more practice to more or less memorize the roots.

Although practice is necessary, there is a greater scope for mnemonics and associations between shapes than might first be apparent. This is alluded to in the website referenced above, but not really explained. An example is finding 口 on the K key. K could be for "kou". I remembered 日　on the J key by remembering J for Japan and 日本. Another tip would be to see the link between the order of the first two and last strokes in 王，戋，and the top of 青. They are all on the G key. The last four strokes of 羊, however, are on the D key, since they are written in a different order, with all three horizontal strokes together. 由　on the M key and 甲 on the L key can be similarly distinguished by stroke order, despite using the same strokes. If you need any tips memorizing particular roots, just ask.

Since I could not get permanent access to practice software, I used this site to gain some proficiency in breaking down roots. After some weeks of practice, I prefered typing with Wubizixing than with Pinyin, although my ability to recall how to write characters still has a very long way to go.

[imron]

I found practice to be the key. This software is particularly useful - 五笔快打.

[vampire]

for practicing I would recommend 金山打字通

[imron]

That's not bad, but there doesn't seem to be an easy way to change the IME when running it, at least not on Windows 7 (no language bar, and standard keyboard shortcuts don't seem to work either). The only way I could get it to use a 五笔 IME was to go the text services settings before running the program, and set my 五笔 IME to be the default IME for all programs, and then it would automatically use this.

[vampire]

maybe running it in winxp competible mode can solve this?

[Altair]

I am one of those people who is outside China and so cannot purchase software on Chinese sites. That is why I used to use the wubi.free.fr/index_en.html to practice. By cursoring over the characters, my browser shows the correct Wubi keystrokes.

[imron]

The one linked to above by vampire is available for free download and doesn't seem to have a time limit. For learning 五笔 it's not as fully-featured as 五笔快打, but my initial impression of is quite good.

[Altair]

Thanks for the info. I myself am too far down my own road to make use of new practice software, but this might be helpful to others in my situation.