Compound TC character entry on Mac

[chinajen]

Hello,

Does anyone know how to enter compound words when using traditional Chinese on the Mac? In simplified, it's easy to type, for example, "jianyi" and get all the two character combinations of those pinyin sounds.

However, in traditional mode I can only enter one character at a time. This becomes very time-consuming as I hunt for the right "jian" and the right "yi".

Is there some kind of setting to get the traditional entry method to accept compound words? I'm on OS 10.3.9.

Thanks for any help.

Jennifer

[novemberfog]

Pinyin input for TC is very weak for OS X. I use zhuyin fuhao input, but I know that others use Hanin. And some people just write in simplified and covert to traditional. I am using 10.3, and I asked about 10.4 but no one replied. So I don't know if the situation has changed. But I know if it doesn't, that alone might be the reason for me to buy a PC next time.

Anyway, check this web site out, it has all sorts of information:

Chinese Mac @ Yale

Good luck, and please let me know if you find a way to make pinyin work for TC.

[chinajen]

...for your input.

After reading a few posts here I realized I could put a number after the pinyin to indicate the tone. So at the very least I can limit the number of characters that pop up. It speeds things up a little.

BTW, what is Hanin based on?

Regards,

Jennifer

[novemberfog]

Hanin is like pinyin, but I think the tone is important. I tried using it once but it was a pain sometimes because it is not exactly like pinyin. The link I gave you above has information about how to use Hanin, just go to the section about Input Methods. I guess if you have all the tones memorized, then Hanin wouldn't be a problem at all. It's worth a try though, right?

[chinajen]

Thanks again! I went to the Yale page and found out exactly how to use Hanin. You can use pinyin but have to include the tones. It does let you type more than one character at once.

I'm trying to do a text-intensive Powerpoint in TC and having to type (and hunt for) each character is proving frustrating. I think using Hanin will help.

Cheers,

Jennifer

[novemberfog]

http://www.wenlin.com/ -- This software is easy to use, I downloaded the demo once and was impressed. But the suggested retail price is a bit high ( US$249 )

[盤古]

Mac OS X 10.4's TC IME remains more or less the same although the whole non-Roman language IME has been updated.

Although I personally would prefer to type Chinese with compounds rather than character-by-character, I've grown accustomed to Hanin's Pinyin input. I now type TC with Hanin just as fast, if not faster than I type SC with Pinyin. Also, I noticed that I make less "typos" as I have to specify the tone of each character with Hanin so it minimizes any potential mistakes. For example, in SC, if I typed "beijing", I could get 北京 or 背景 but in Hanin, I type "bei3jing1" and I get 北京 right away.

I do remember a while back (around 10.1/10.2) there was a third-party Chinese IME which allowed compound-pinyin input for TC. It might still work for 10.3/10.4. Here is the link: http://www.unidocsys.com/products/PanALEX/

I personally can't imagine switching to PC as fonts, especially Chinese fonts, simply look SOO much nicer on Mac OS X than Windows.

[doumeizhen]

QIM!

20 dollars, and from what it seems, well worth it.