Writing Chinese Characters on Mac OS with Mouse?

[lechuan]

Does anyone know if it's possible to write Chinese characters on Mac OS (Mavericks) using only the Mouse? I'm using a Mac Mini, and don't have a trackpad. I occasionally have to enter characters that I don't know the pronunciation for, so the Pinyin IME won't cut it.

[mikelove]

Looks like Baidu IME has a Mac version - that should support mouse handwriting.

 

EDIT: no, seems like it doesn't. (mods feel free to delete this, sorry)

[character]

This http://www.yale.edu/chinesemac/pages/osx7.html says that OS X supports Wubi, in case that's an option.  Wenlin has handwriting recognition, but it's not very friendly compared with Pleco (speaking of which, you could just have Pleco recognize the character and you could then copy/paste/send that to your Mac somehow).

 

The standalone magic trackpad is a nice piece of kit, FWIW, and lets one perform gestures as well as 'mousing' and handwriting.

[lechuan]

Thanks @character and @mikelove.

 

Yeah, at home I use the trackpad on my macbook, but at work, where I use a Mac Mini, I usually just write in Pleco on my iPad, then cut-and-paste.

 

Still surprised Apple doesn't support something like this, Windows has had it for years. Or I guess they figure if people want it badly enough, they'll just get a Magic Trackpad. Thanks for the trackpad suggestion, I always wondering why one would bother getting one for a desktop, now I know why!

[character]

Still surprised Apple doesn't support something like this, Windows has had it for years. Or I guess they figure if people want it badly enough, they'll just get a Magic Trackpad.

Apple sells a lot more laptops than desktops, and the solution you describe means buying more Apple hardware, so it's a good solution from their point of view.

[hedwards]

You might just buying a small tablet, monoprice has them for about $25 and it should work well. http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=108&cp_id=10841&cs_id=1084101&p_id=5551&seq=1&format=2

 

I've got a larger version and it's quite good.

 

I see, misunderstood there, but still if you find a good IME that takes the hand writing, a proper tablet is much more likely to get the input accepted.

[vesperate]

 

Still surprised Apple doesn't support something like this, Windows has had it for years. Or I guess they figure if people want it badly enough, they'll just get a Magic Trackpad.

 

Maybe this has to do with the fact that Windows handwriting recognition with mouse is so bad! It works for the 100 most common characters but for others sometimes you can try 20 times and it won't find what you wrote. Even when taking time to do each stroke.

 

Maybe it's windows fault, but maybe it's just difficult technology to implement for a mouse. Trackpad drawing gives cleaner strokes.

[Shelley]

For the rare occasion when i use handwriting with my desk PC, with Wenlin mostly, I use a pen and tablet.

I have a wacom tablet.

 

Have to say for practising writing characters it does give a good approximation to pen and paper.

 

This is a picture of one very similar to mine.