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As a native Chinese speaker and one of the first generation born and grew up with personal computers (born in early 80s), I'd say a machine-learning powered han
by devy 10y ago
As a native Chinese speaker and one of the first generation born and grew up with personal computers (born in early 80s), I'd say a machine-learning powered handwriting input method is more convenient. No hard feelings. It's just too hard to reinventing the wheel on this issue where tens of thousands of engineers had worked on this problem throughout the 90s.
I remember when I went to college in Beijing in late 90s there were literally 100s of companies were selling Chinese input method softwares and hardwares or both. What I've witnessed along the past two decades is that all converged into a few methods based on pronunciation (variants of Pinyin or voice dictation) or based on shapes (variants of Wubi or handwriting). And I can attest that Pinyin is predominant since it's a mandatory course in schools. There are even newer machine learning powered hybrid input methods emerging.[1]
Having said that, if you don't know Chinese neither any of its input methods, just want input Chinese characters casually, this may be useful but if you do want dive in to learn Chinese from ground up, I am not sure if learning this Wuhou input method is time well spent.
[1]: http://www.xunfei.cn/ http://www.xunfei.cn/
- hawkice 10y ago> if you don't know Chinese neither any of its input methods, just want input Chinese characters casually, this may be useful As a casual student of Chinese, pinyin is actually pretty good for me (I'm American). I don't need any new markings on my keyboard, and it helps force me to learn pronunciations anyway, which is good. :) Also: I saw people using the handwriting-based input in Hong Kong and it seemed like they were typing slower than I do, which is bananas.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago> Also: I saw people using the handwriting-based input in Hong Kong and it seemed like they were typing slower than I do, which is bananas. Speaking as another American who types in Chinese, predictive input doesn't work at all for me when I type in English. It works really well when I type in Chinese, because I'm just not able to produce intricate, idiosyncratic Chinese sentences. It doesn't surprise me that native speakers might take more time to type in their own language; their range of expression is much greater.
- KennyCason 10y agoAgreed. I type Chinese every day and quite frequently. Pinyin is plenty fast enough for typing. It also seems to be the main input method for Chinese excluding Taiwan/HK.
- inimino 10y agoPinyin is great, but completely useless when you see a character you can't pronounce, e.g. when using a dictionary. Handwriting input can also be challenging for complete beginners who don't know how to recognize strokes, etc. I can see something like this potentially having some value in those situations. Dictionaries, ...
- skosch 10y agoI'm sure that he – as someone who spent years developing his own input method as a hobby – is acutely aware of all of this. Still, as a side project, I would consider this a success: he's done his research and he came up with a really cool, well-thought-out tool. It's not going to take the world (or China) by storm, but it doesn't need to. You're right, of course, about new learners better investing their time elsewhere.
- corv 10y agoEven if this won't replace current input methods, I think this is clever and a surprisingly intuitive way to type Chinese characters.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]