--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
wrote:

>
> Chinese users _don't_ prefer pinyin. They report it is much slower

and

> less intuitive (NB, Suzanne!) than the character-based input methods.
> Typing-bee contestants never use it.

Misinformation is not going to help at all. While in Hong Kong I had a
visit with a Physics professor from China and his teenage son. He said
that he and other professors and his children used Pinyin input. The
*secretaries* use Wubi. It is faster but it is a specialist skill.

A professor would not likely be trained in Wubi or Cangjie nor would
they have the need to be. I saw a another teenager in Beijing use
Pinyin for Instant messaging and it is quite as fast as a North
American teenager who lacks secretarial training.

Some statistics say that 97% of Chinese use Pinyin input. I doubt that
this is true but nontheless, Pinyin is popular.

Please don't grab a point and exaggerate.

My point once again is that Pinyin is not for everyone. Some people
who do not know Mandarin, or have not learned Pinyin, benefit from
glyph-based input. Otherwise they cannot use the computer.

Nokia is among those who have developed easy to use glyph-based
input.

This is not an either or situation. I don't want to be associated with
such black and white thinking.

However, I do agree that a significant part of Africa and India are
not literate in roman orthography no matter what the official language
is. And I don't see why making an input method that suits a few Vai
users who are literate in English would preclude developing input
methods for those who are not.

Suzanne