Pinyin based 繁體 IMEs (Windows)

[外国赤佬]

How many are there? I'm only aware of Sogou, Baidu and Google (haven't tried it yet, though). Sogou and Baidu are both primarily 簡體 IMEs, and their 繁體 dictionaries leave a lot to be desired. There's plenty of 錯別字, and also 異體字 (e.g. 爲 often comes up instead of 為, 裏 instead of 裡, etc), not to mention that they more often than not give me 后 instead of 後. I'm already kinda fed up with them. Is Google much better?

It's really too bad, because my HTC phone has an excellent TC pinyin IME, so sad I can't use it on my laptop.

[skylee]

I use google. The pc version is better than the android version. And in any case it is much less annoying than sogou. No pop-ups. Blissful.

[Takeshi]

Probably not the best, but back when I used Windows I used Microsoft's Mainland IME to type in Traditional (it had a choice that lets you do this). Not especially good, but not "wrong" at least. You get 後 and 髮/發 and stuff obviously. 爲 and 裏 are not "wrong" in any way, but it's just that the TW standard uses 為 and 裡. Seeing 爲 could be happening for many reasons; the default font I have in Windows XP (Mainland ver) makes the 為 codepoint look like 爲 for me. (I think Windows IME uses 為 and 裏 by default but you can change it.)

I know it is not Windows, but the ibus Traditional IME is excellent. If you could somehow use it on Windows I would highly recommend it. I used to use it until I recently switched to 倉頡 and it's very nice in that it remembers your own phrases.

If you use the TW Standard, it might be easier to learn 注音 and use it to type. It will be hard at first, but 注音 IMEs are all designed for (the TW Standard) of Traditional Chinese and some are fairly advanced. I would recommend "Chewing".

[外国赤佬]

I installed the Google IME and it does exactly what I want it to. Excellent.

For the record: 爲 and 裏 are the true orthodox variants (as in 康熙字典), but they're considered non-standard nowadays, just like 靑.

As for 注音, I have it on my phone and am learning it. The problem is, I type much slower in it, because the layout is still new to me. But in theory, a 注音 user should be able to type faster, because it takes only 1-3 symbols per syllable instead of up to 6 in pinyin. But then there's also 雙拼, which should be even more faster.

[iMeng@Meng]

Use. Google. It. is the Best!!!!!!! I use it and its soooooooo fast and reliable and uh! So quick and easy!!!!

[skylee]

For the record: 爲 and 裏 are the true orthodox variants (as in 康熙字典), but they're considered non-standard nowadays,

Which standard? I am positive that 裏 is the standard here in Hong Kong.

According to the Education Bureau in Hong Kong, 裡 is a variant. http://www.edbchinese.hk/lexlist_en/result.jsp?id=3705&sortBy=stroke&jpC=lshk

[外国赤佬]

Huh, really? That's kinda cool then. I did notice some differences between the HK and TW standards before. E.g. 綫/線. I wonder, which standard is more orthodox.

[Takeshi]

Try looking at section 3 of this page to get an understanding of the differences and see which is more orthodox:

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/常用字字形表

[brilight]

I am using QQ pinyin, which outputs high percentage of correct Traditional Words compared with google, sogou,etc.

I recommend using qq拼音純淨版 instead of qq拼音傳統版

[KonW]

you can set up custom phases in the IME settings , which means you can force the no.1 candidate for "li" to be something you input earlier(like 裏 ) and force the default candidate of 裡 to go to the bottom of the list

[OneEye]

I'm not sure why it's a big deal. In real life, you get non-standard characters all the time in printed documents. I see 裡 and 裏, 群 and 羣, etc. all the time, sometimes even in the same article. In my experience, people don't generally worry themselves with what's standard. In fact, I think I see 安 written this way more than I see it written the standard way. Standards themselves change too, so you'll occasionally have teachers of differing age groups arguing over how to write a certain character. "Oh, well we learned it this way. Your way is wrong" Well no, it isn't, it's just that the standard was different when you learned it.

I'd say unless you're required to conform strictly to the TW standard, it's probably more trouble than it's worth. For one thing, you'd need to be using an MOE font, because any other font will vary from the standard in different ways. And then it would be in 楷體 (at least that's the only MOE font I know of), which is not especially appropriate for most purposes (宋體 fonts are the usual preference, much like serif fonts are used in most publication in Latin script).

[外国赤佬]

What's wrong with the other TW fonts, such as MingLiu?

[OneEye]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with it. That was my point. In fact, to my eye it's quite an attractive-looking font. But if you actually have a need to conform strictly to the TW standard, that's not the font you want. For instance, 流 should be written with 9 strokes like this according to the TW standard. In MingLiu, it is written with 10 strokes. And the 點 on top of 隹 (and any character containing it) should go down and to the right according to the standard, but in MingLiu it goes to the left (which I believe is "orthodox").

But again, my whole point was that in real life this doesn't matter, and I don't know if I've ever seen 流 printed according to the MOE standard outside of textbooks for children and foreigners (and, as one might expect, only in 楷體).

Edit: in fact, looking at it more, MingLiu really makes zero attempt to adhere to the TW standard at all. Why do you call it a Taiwan font? It just looks like a very clear, readable 宋體 font, that actually seems to do a nice job of being country-neutral. I'm on a Mac and had to actually download and install it in order to take a look at it, but now it looks like I might have a new favorite font, thanks!

[外国赤佬]

Are you sure you're not confusing MingLiu (細明體) with SimSun (宋体)? Everything you've mentioned is included in MingLiu (at least the Windows 7 version of it, though I really doubt it that they changed it just now).

Here, I took a picture of MingLiu showing some of the TW specific character forms:

As far as I'm aware, the MoE's font is identical to 標楷 (kaiu), except it's free and only has the Big 5 graphs.

[OneEye]

Hm...interesting. I don't see how I could possibly be looking at "SimSun" and think it says "MingLiu", but my font does not look like that. Who knows?

Still, my point holds. Why does it matter? And IMO that isn't as nice looking as whatever it is called MingLiu that I installed yesterday.

[dwq]

MS does update their fonts between windows versions. You can see here that MingLiU Version 7.00 is used for Win7 and 6.02 for Vista. At least for Japanese, the character shapes change too to conform to national standards. If OneEye is using XP it probably explains the difference.

[OneEye]

As I said before, I'm on a Mac and had to find the font and download it. It seems there's a good chance that whatever I found is not the real MingLiu. Oh well, I still like the font I found.

[dwq]

As to the original topic, MS IME 2010 (and, I think, the default MS IME for tw) can be configured to use pinyin instead of zhuyin, but I find it very clumsy to use in this configuration because some functions (like defining your own pronunciation / adding new words) is disabled, and the dictionary used follows the Taiwan standard, which sometimes have different pronunciation / word frequency from mainland, plus glyph differences which makes you go hunt for 裏 way back in the conversion results when it gives you 裡, for example.

OTOH, MS Pinyin 2010 is much more intelligent as it is sentence-based, you type a whole sentence and it chooses the best-fitting words for you. I find it pretty accurate in its choices, though some words are not guessable with limited context and it can't be blamed: 他们／她们／它们 for example. You cannot input tones with it though, so for a learner it might make you lazy. (I like to challenge myself when I use the MS TW IME and input pinyin + tone to make sure I remember correctly. It has the benefit of narrowing down the character choices, too.)

Seeing people's recommendations, I might give Google, Baidu etc. a try, but I am not really inclined to sending my every keystroke to some server online. Do they do that, and can they be configured not to if so?

[Hro]

QQ pinyin at http://py.qq.com is pretty solid, I think it's actually the best one and I've been using it for a while with no problems.

[Takeshi]

The MingLiu in Vista indeed is a very orthodox font unlike the very TW-ey one in 外国赤佬's post. I'm not sure why they changed it, but I like the old version better.