Subject: RE: Mouse for stroke input

From: "J.B. WANG" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 90 12:56:00 EDT

There had been a number of discussions on Stroke input methods.

Lately I have also come across some papers on this topic. Of course, almost
everyone tried to say it was the best and would be the future.

To draw a summary:

(I mean brief sub-summary)

1) most of the stroke methods classify over 100 basic Chinese strokes into
 5~10 groups, and assign them to a key on the keypad or mother key board.
2) most of the stroke methods narrow down corresponding Chinese words
 as one increases number of strokes, and displays the selections on the
 screen.
3) most of the stroke input methods need strokes in sequence to make correct
 judgments.

The commercially most sucessful stroke input methods include:
1) Wang Yongming's WuBieXing (five-stroke method),
2) Pressure writing board input method

I personally have seen and or used 3 kinds of stroke inputing schemes, i.e.,
Wu-Bi-Xing and Wu-Bi-Hua, and one designed by a friend of mine using
nine keys on the keypad or mouse (mostly for creating input index).

My understanding is:

1) Only the pressure-sensitive writing board will have the real practical
 significance to survive.
2) All the rest of keyboard stroke input methods on any kind of machine
 have the same fatal problem as PinYin input method one~two years ago, i.e.,
 extremely high brain fatigue rate. In the view that you have to switch
 between the screen, key board and memory library (of stroke grouping, and
 sound -> stroke conversion). From this aspect, PinYin had less problem,
 because there was no stroke grouping and sound->stroke conversion steps.
 This alone may give stroke input the death sentence or life-time secondary
 input method sentence (just a little bit better than GuoBiao, or DianBao
 input methods).

Now PinYin+CiZu+Statistics+Grammer(AI) input method which are seen in
TianMa, FeiMa, Byx 2.0 and Ch-series is viewed to be the most prospective
input method in an article appeared on 5/25(?) issue of People's Daily.
If more and more effort is devoted, I personally believe it will become
THE method for keyboard inputing. Speech input and writing input do not
belong to keyboard input methods, but the speech recognition will be very
closely related to the above method PinYin input method.

Just like with English typing, there is a standard, and many auxilary
ones, e.g., two-finger typing (instead of 10), stroke input, radical
input, Bu-Shou input and etc may not become obsolete in Chinese keyboard
input in a short time. But one thing for sure, a brute-force table checking
input method will always be necessary, and today it is the GuoBiao input
method.

Sincerely yours,

JB Wang

p.s.: I will still be in Stevens for another 0.5 months
(201)-420-5814