From: Yueheng Xu <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1993 12:48:53 -0600

Questions and Answers

        Yueheng Xu   [email-masked]
        ( March/01/1993 )

1.  Input Method

>Xu Yueheng says the most popular input method for Chinese characters is
>Pinyin.  I remember an article said Wang Weimin's wu-bi-zi-xing covers
>90% of Chinese computing market in the Mainland.  I also heard Cang-jie is the
>most popular system in Taiwan, because it is much faster than PinYin.

>What is the real situation on this matter?  Thanks for information.

>G. Chang

Answers:  No confusion. I say PingYing is most popular because every
          GB Chinese system is equipped with it and 90% of the total
          computer users use it as first choice (Not only casual users,
          Those Chinese system developers like me, with a LXPC Chinese Card,
          can easily inputed my 100 page PhD disseration in a short time
          by using PingYing, we also input all our software document by
          PingYing. In this point, I agree a lot with Dr. Yan Yong-xin).
          Wang Yong-ming's wu-bi-zi-xing may be available (not already
          covered ) on 90% of Chinese computing system if you need to
          install it, but only trained professional typist use it. It may
          be possible to advertise that wu-bi-zi-xin covers 90 % of the
          professional typist's market. (Statistics can be interpretated
          much differently, isn't it ?). As for Cang-jie, I have no idea
          about it, I simply infer that there are much more population in
          mainland than in Taiwan.

          Because no input method is both satisfied by general population
          and professional typist. so any meaningful comparison should be
          made in two different categoryies: 1) for general population;
          2) for typist;

          Just for your information, Mr. Zhang Dao-Zheng, a young technical
          employee in State Department of PRC (also a graduate student of
          Beijing Aeronautical and Aerospace University ) and a former major
          contributor to Wang's wu-bi-zi-xin, has registered his patent of
          Jian-Fan Wu-bi-zi-xin both in China and in USA. This version of
          wu-bi-zi-xin can be used both for the input of simplized chinese
          (Jian-Ti) and for traditional chinese (Fan-Ti). Because Wang's
          version is sensitive to the difference of Jian-Ti / Fan-Ti, I believe
          Zhang's wu-bi-zi-xin may be a hope for the unification of mainland's
          Chinese input and Tainwain's Chinese input methods. Right now, no
          Taiwan Chinese system (like Chinese version of MS-DOS, CWIN, etc. )
          used by people came from mainland simply because we do not know how
          to input and have no ineterst to spend time to learn it.

          Finally, I don't believe any one in CCNET-L will became a professional
          typist in the future for a living, so just stick to any one input
          methos you already familair with, but pay attention to the LianXiang,
          Self-learnning, CiZu, Phrase-input and other intelligent software
          features implemented on a system when the input methods is an issue.
          If you are Chinese system developer, you'd better let your system
          to be able to dynamically load any third party's input method (like
          LXPC, CCDOS 2.13 series has ). If you are an application programmer,
          you don't even have to care anything. Even the key combinations are
          re-definable in LXPC and other systems, thus able to avoid function
          key conflicts with your application program.

2. Library Chinese System and more ...

>    temporarily. And in a few library systems we need makek use of the whole
>    64k range of character set and treat ASCII set as its subset and forget
>    about the confilict and any consequencial compatibility problem. In this
>    case, the library computer system is specially designed and thus not
>    much need for compatability ). The Beijing Library (National Library
>    of China ) use a NEC made system for such kind of job.

>very interesting.  would you please provide more detail about this NEC
>system: when introduced? the detail of coding they are using?

>this will help for me to understand the NEC business.

>thanks in advance.

>yih

  Answer: When I visited Beijing Library before the end of 1991, I saw many
         idle terminals (no power, no connection yet) have been put in some
         reading room since the openning of this new site of the library,
         I asked staff about the system. They told me that this system
         is still under construction yet, it is a gift from NEC and the Chinese
         character set for this system will be 64k. I have no other direct
         information except a later newpaper report about its operation. But
         At the time I visited there, they only use PC and CD-ROM reading
         system like MedLine in some seperated reading room and index-room.
         But no Library-wide book information system is in operation like we
         used in USA universities nowadays.

         The libray of Chinese Academy of Science is a little bit better, all
         the books and patron ID's are now maked by bar code and loan-return
         is processed by a single PC-based system which use Light Pen for
         reading bar code. This system is developed by Hope Computer company
         which is known for its UCDOS chinese character system I mentioned in
         my 01/29/93 article in CCNET-L.  I like to mention here that, Chinese
         students and programmers now in USA can easily contribute a lot to
         mainland China if you have access the source code of any bar-code
         reading related multi-user transaction system like we used here every
         day in Library, Supermarket, Banks, etc.  Together with the field of
         network communication in China, these are two fields that you can
         contribute a lot only with a little effort. This is also a good
         field for programmers to open/market your software business in China.
         Your PC softarware is hard to be copyright protected, but these
         systems never have problem.

3. Chinese code standard

>Finally, I am a little curious about how the government controls
>what type of system is sold on the market. I read on People's Daily
>about the ban on non-standard systems, and now I hear it from
>Mr. Xu again.  Mr. Xu also says this ban is "by law".  Does Mr.
>Xu has more detail about this?  Which Chinese law is being applied
>to this ban, specifically? and How?  Does this ban apply only to
>Chinese character coding, or does it apply to other technologies and
>products as well?  (I can't imagine a law is written to single
>out the character coding standard for protection.)

>I think it is not wise to enforce official standards by law.
>It can only inhibit technological advancement and market competition.
>It takes time for a standard to be formulated and adopted, which
>means it is impossible for a standard to include the latest
>technological advances and innovations. I can understand the
>desire to have systems being compatible with each others, but
>there are other better ways of achieving this, inhibiting
>innovation is too high a price to pay for compatibility.

>  Ya-Gui Wei

  This law may be is an administrative law, it is enforced by import/export
departments, the details may be available by calling Chinese consul nearest
you. It seems to me that this law is primarily used to prohibit the Chinese
system developed in Taiwan to appear in mainland to avoid a multi-code
confusion in mainland China. It saves a lot of conversion questions that
we see every week in CCNET-L. To my understanding, this is not a political
consideration, nor a pre-mature administrative decision, it is based on a
desperately needed economic and technical standardnization consideration. The
standardnization process of Chinese character set system has already past its
4th decades and already existed as a accepted satndard for past 12 yeras.
Now the GB font (16x16, 24x24) are already standardnized and in massively
production as ROM chips and even the interface circuitry of them is in public
domain. In the future, every display panel of a instrument, of a Beeper, of
...... , will probably has such a ROM font built-in. The only complains among
our system developers about the internal coding schem of GB is that, some
Chinese character is identical with some double positioned frame symbol in
128-256 range. It takes more software work to deal with this.

   As for the 7-bit code schem used for ZWDOS, I believe it is a valuable
innovation in the existing Internet community. I don't believe it is the
target of above law. The Internet is said going to extended to mainland
China through a gateway in South Korean. Whether the ZWDOS schem will find
a opportunity to appear in China, I recommend the author of this schem to
contact Prof. Hua-Ling Qian, Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese
Academy of Sciecne, Beijing, 100080, P.R. China as soon as possible. He is
the leader of the Zhong-Guang-Cun network project which is the first
WAN project in China and might be the first back born of Internet to mainland
China. Any practices and experiences accumulated through this project will
probably have decisive influence over the national standard and therefore
the technical law in this field in the future.

4.  Unicode etc.

>Dear Mr. Xu -- I enjoyed reading your article about Chinese DOS that
>was discributed on CCNET.   I wonder if you know anything about the
>knowledge/acceptance/use of Unicode in mainland?  Is the industry there
>prepared or planning to adopt Unicode-based products,  such as a new
>operating system?   I'll appreciate any information about this.
>Thanks,  --  TinKam Ho ([email-masked])

 Answer: I have no direct information about what is going in government
  policy and the activities of standardnization institute. I only heard about
  Unicode not long time ago and read a MicroSoft document about it yesterday.
  But we programmers are eagerly waiting for big computer and software
  providers such as IBM, DEC, HP, Microsoft to support the Unicode (or other
  Double Byte Character Set, or DBCS )in their standard software in the future,
  not just in the Chinese version of MS-DOS, Chinese version of MS-Windows,
  etc..... If this is supported, there is no special need of Chinese computing
  systems. We then can treat Chinese as another font and our greatest
  programmers in China do not have to spend time in developing so many
  Chinese sytems, instead, we can spend more time to do application
  development.  (althoug this will reduce the importance of our jobs. )

5.  Spelling of PinYin, etc.

Thanks for the Chinese-on-DOS info.
For next time, could you correct your spellings PingYing and ZhuYing to
PinYin and ZhuYin? (I forgot if there was also a ShuangPing which should
be ShuangPin). It might confuse some people.

   Answer: Thanks, you are right.