Stage Linguistique wrote:

>
> > A Chinese character is written as
> <radical>+<something
> > else>
> > The number of <radical>'s is a limited set (214),
> but
> > the number of <something else>'s is not. What you
> are
> > envisioning would be either (a) impossible to
> > implement or (b) far too complex to use by end-users
> > (how many Chinese use CangJie?)
>
> The form of a Chinese character cannot vary without
> limit and in
> unpredictable ways. The number 214 is not sacrosanct,
> and there are
> around 900 "phonetics" in one list
>
> >>>>
>
> Yes, but even taking your and Marco's remarks into
> account, the system Marco envisioned would only cover
> about 90% of Hànzì without complex input. Using Pinyin
> input covers 100% of Hànzì without complex manipulations.

Of all the dozens of phonetic schemes for notating Chinese, why fixate
on pinyin?
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...