葛亞輝（美國人） Posted June 20, 2006 at 07:00 PM Report Share Posted June 20, 2006 at 07:00 PM So I have this Mac Powerbook, 2 years old, OSX 10.3.9, and it has options somewhere for enabling chinese, both simplified and traditional, where you type the pinyin then a little menu pops up and you select the character that you want. Now, i have been using traditional for a year and that has worked perfectly fine. But now I'm switching to simplified and I find I can't get it to work...if I hit the numbers it types the numbers in roman letters, but when i hit the keys to type a pinyin word, nothing seems to happen...any thoughts as to why? edit: this is not something tied to a specific program either...when the computer's language i can type in chinese in any program with a text box so it's not a specific software issue Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doumeizhen Posted June 20, 2006 at 07:55 PM Report Share Posted June 20, 2006 at 07:55 PM Hmmm, I am not sure if the menu has changed over the last OSX version, but from the pull-down language menu you'll want to select 智能ABC, which is ITBABC or something like that in English. It might also be labeled as pinyin in the drop down menu. I remember playing around with the menus when I first got it and I had a similar problem. I hope I am not being too simple here. Once you have this method selected it will also give you a bunch of options to play around with. While you are here, I have not been able to figure out compound character input in Traditional (meaning you type zhongwen, and it gives you zhogwen， 中文。 whereas single character input zhong 中wen文) If you are switching this might cause some confusion. Also, and I doubt this is it, but if you have caps selected it will just type Roman. That's my ten cents. By your description I can't think of anything else. Keep us posted. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
葛亞輝（美國人） Posted June 20, 2006 at 11:20 PM Author Report Share Posted June 20, 2006 at 11:20 PM Ahah! Yes, thanks very much, that worked perfectly...my problem was I don't read enough chinese to be able to make a lot of sense out of the menus, so I didn't want to fool with them too much for fear of destroying something. I should have guessed the option with "ABC" in it would be the one!! Regarding your issue, I think I understand what you mean....just in playing with the simplified thing for a few minutes after I saw your post I saw that it allows you to type a ton in pinyin and then go through and choose the characters one by one, or apparently in the case of some common words (it did it for 中文 for me) it just picks the characters for you automatically As far as I know, thats not possible with the traditional input. Mine, at least, tends to beep at me and not let me type more once I've typed a few letters, e.g. it stops me at "zhongwe". When I was typing in traditional, I would just do it character by character like you're describing, e.g. zhong中 wen文。 However, there is, I believe, a way to save a little time with traditional input, although I never really figured out how to do it. It just happened to me sometimes by accident, where you choose a character, and then the menu pops back up before you type anything else to offer characters that commonly follow that one, i.e. you type "zhong" and select 中 and the menu then stays there, offering you 文 to put after the 中 （and 国 and whatever else). So, I'm making a short story long. To summarize, yes, I believe there is a way to make inputting traditional a bit faster, although its not as good as what simplified (apparently!) has. I don't know exactly how to do it, but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out. Also, I should note that I have just finished my first year of chinese...everything we did in class was handwritten, so I was never trained by anyone on how to do chinese input in a computer or anything, i just figured it out becuase i was interested. So, I might be totally wrong (in fact, I probably am) about traditional input methods, and I might have just misunderstood your question. Anyway, I hope this helps!! And of course 多谢多谢 for your help!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doumeizhen Posted June 21, 2006 at 02:01 AM Report Share Posted June 21, 2006 at 02:01 AM Shucks, I was afraid you were going to say that about the traditional. I never learned them, so I struggle with in, and moreover, they are so tiny. But increasing the size of the little pop-up menu helps. A lot. When I chat with friends in Taiwan I just keep a converter open and flip back and forth... The ABC thing also took me a while to figure out for the same reason as you. I didn't know how to read at the time. Luckily, I had a lucky guess. I am glad its working for you! Well, 葛亞輝,继续努力！ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
葛亞輝（美國人） Posted June 21, 2006 at 02:21 AM Author Report Share Posted June 21, 2006 at 02:21 AM ^^well, I may be wrong about the traditional thing, you should probably ask someone who knows for sure or something... but yeah, i was struggling so hard until i found out you could increase the size of the menu so the characters arent tiny...i still dont understand how 中国人 can read them so small! I'm sure its just something you get used to, but it amazes me how tiny they are on sites and stuff sometimes...I have to copy-paste them into MS word and increase the font size! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gamerfu Posted June 21, 2006 at 03:37 AM Report Share Posted June 21, 2006 at 03:37 AM chinese people read them everyday. i assume thy look at the radicals then figure out the word. i don't believe they read every stroke like us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doumeizhen Posted June 21, 2006 at 06:08 AM Report Share Posted June 21, 2006 at 06:08 AM Gamerfu, I think you are right. Just like we like can read words even if the letters in them are scrambled. I've also noticed myself getting better, but since the Traditional part of my education is non-existent, its like starting again at the beginning. Although there are some I can guess, others just don't react with my brain at all. Although, it's true, my brain just fills them in sometimes. (Which might explain my out of the ordinary analysis of certain plays). 葛亞輝, in these forums we've established that traditonal has no compound input, but I am an incorrigable optimist and dreamer... One day... Of course, this day might come faster if all of you joined in sending Apple letters encouraging their development. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
葛亞輝（美國人） Posted June 21, 2006 at 05:22 PM Author Report Share Posted June 21, 2006 at 05:22 PM ^^yeah, maybe i will send a letter....I don't really see how that would be any harder (or easier) than doing it for simplified, so I wonder why they don't? then again, I don't know a lot about chinese or computers, so who am I to judge.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WangLongju Posted June 23, 2006 at 07:40 AM Report Share Posted June 23, 2006 at 07:40 AM . Two things here. 1. The Chinese-Mac Discussion Group can be found here. 2. Those of you using Macs may find QIM (QuickCore Input Method) useful. That site tends to be real slow, so you could alternatively get it here, here, or here. It's only US$20. . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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