Subject: John's thoughts

From: Ingar Holst <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 5 Sep 1993 15:44:15 +0200

Dear Netters,
   John writes that there must be a method for writing cc that we cannot
necessarily pronounce, albeit picture.
   There is already a system for doinf this; it is called the 214 radicals.
I have worked with Ni Hongbo for the last half year to implement this in
NJStar version 3.0. When it comes out, please take a look at it.
   In my view, only *2* input methods are required for any Chinese word
processor:

1.) Pinyin

2.) 214 radicals

Regards,

Ingar

---

From: yuan tzeng <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 5 Sep 1993 11:11:11 -0500

>    In my view, only *2* input methods are required for any Chinese word

   No. This is simly not ture. Bopomofo is one of the  cases. Actually
many "inteligent" Bopomofo imput method can read-time correct a string
of single Chinese characters into a meaningful phrase in case you typed
them wrong. A good example can be seen on ETen's WanSin input method
although it is far from perfect.

  PC Magazine Chinese Edition, August issue introduced a freeware
program called PH.EXE. This is also a good tool to make Bopomofo fly :-)

  Note that for many people who know nothing about English, the traditional
Bopomofo is just a such meaningful input tool. For these people, Bopomofo
is probably the only input method that they can use by nature (no need to
learn, and without extra equipments such as hand-write input board). In
such a case Pinyin doesn't make sense for these people.

  For your information, 2 great books, "Internet-Tools" (ISBN: 957-23-013-4)
& "Linux/Unix user's manual for Taiwanese" (still on-line) were completed
by the help of Bopomofo input method. Maybe you can imagine that such
an improved Bopomofo can reach a great input rate as well as correct rate.
(There are about n * 100,000 characters composed in these 2 books where
  1 < n < 20   :-)

--yuan