On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 20:36:56 -0000, suzmccarth <suzmccarth@...>
wrote:

> Hi Nicholas.

Well, howdy, in return!

The new Q9 input method for Chinese -

>
> http://www.q9tech.com/eng/product/q9/try/try.php3

Remarkable. I tried the English demo, then the stroke demo, but the
latter's explanation was in Chinese, which I only recognize (I think I can
tell Simplified from Traditional). Nevertheless, the amazing 3-by-3 array
of so few graphic elements was fascinating. I could understand enough of
what must have been explanatory examples to see how it would be used. (I
thought the four corners scheme for dictionaries, and the Nelson scheme,
both from earlier experience, were nice, as well...)

Quick, portable dictionary lookup of likely choices seems to be of major
importance, here, as in some (all?) other IM[E]s. The English demo surely
showed that.

Q9's Server response was slow, but I overheard that a new nasty is bogging
down the 'Net. Yuck.

> The segments that are used to compose the syllable should be the
> visual elements found within the glyph. For Tamil this would be
> mean using visual sequence of glyph elements.

I'd love to see the element repertoire, once it's stable.

> I had thought that Pinyin was great for keyboarding Chinese but found
> when in China that there is a demographic split. The university
> educated and urban teens use Pinyin input but when I talked to other
> adults in China, teachers from HK and teachers in China, teachers of the
> dyslexic and the very young, and aid personnel working with farmers,
> they all agreed that glyph-based was easier. Pinyin is a restricted
> literacy and not universal even in China.

> The test of an appropriate input method would be that it can be learned
> without detailed instruction. The input should be intuitive to native
> speakers (including children) of the language.

Oh, my, do I ever agree!

--
Nicholas Bodley /*|*\ Waltham, Mass.
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