Cangjie input method

Cangjie input method
Cangjie input method
	Coding of "倉頡輸入法" (i.e. Cangjie method) in traditional Chinese characters

Last updated October 06, 2024

[in translation]
In terms of output: The output and input, in fact, [form] an integrated whole; there is no reason that [they should be] dogmatically separated into two different facilities.… This is in fact necessary.…

In this early system, when the user types "yk", for example, to get the Chinese character 文, the Cangjie codes do not get converted to any character encoding and the actual string "yk" is stored. The Cangjie code for each character (a string of 1 to 5 lowercase letters plus a space) was the encoding of that particular character.

Demonstration of character generator Mingzhu's capability to generate characters according to the codes. The first character is ([?]
Shi Ta ), which denotes a kind of soup in Xuzhou cuisine. Mingzhu xiaoziku1.PNG — Demonstration of character generator *Mingzhu*'s capability to generate characters according to the codes. The first character is 𮨻 (⿰飠它), which denotes a kind of soup in Xuzhou cuisine.

A particular "feature" of this early system is that, if one sends random lowercase words to it, the character generator will attempt to construct Chinese characters according to the Cangjie decomposition rules, sometimes causing strange, unknown characters to appear. This unintended feature, "automatic generation of characters", is described in the manual and is responsible for producing more than 10,000 of the 15,000 characters that the system can handle. The name Cangjie, evocative of the creation of new characters, was indeed apt for this early version of Cangjie.

The presence of the integrated character generator also explains the historical necessity for the existence of the "X" key, which is used for the disambiguation of decomposition collisions: because characters are "chosen" when the codes are "output", every character that can be displayed must in fact have a unique Cangjie decomposition. It would not make sense—nor would it be practical—for the system to provide a choice of candidate characters when a random text file is displayed, as the user would not know which of the candidates is correct.

Issues

Cangjie was designed to be an easy-to-use system to help promote the use of Chinese computing. However, many users find Cangjie is difficult to learn and use, with many difficulties caused by poor instruction.^{[ citation needed ]}

Perceived difficulties

In order to input using Cangjie, knowledge of both the names of the radicals as well as their auxiliary shapes is required. It is common to find tables of the Cangjie radicals with their auxiliary shapes taped onto the monitors of computer users.
One must also be familiar with the decomposition rules, lack of knowledge of which results in increased difficulty in typing the intended characters.
The user cannot type a character that they have forgotten how to write (a problem with all non-phonetic based input methods).

With enough practice, users can overcome the above problems. Typical touch-typists can type Chinese at 25 characters per minute (cpm), or better, using Cangjie, despite having difficulty remembering the list of auxiliary shapes or the decomposition rules. Experienced Cangjie typists can reportedly attain a typing speed from 60 cpm to over 200 cpm.^{[ citation needed ]}

According to Chen Minzheng, his teaching experience at Longtian Elementary School in Taitung in 1990, the average typing speed of children was 90 words per minute, and some children even reached more than 130 words per minute.^[5]^{[ better source needed ]}

Limitations in implementation

The decomposition of a character depends on a predefined set of "standard shapes" (標準字形). However, as many variations of Cangjie exist in different countries, the standard shape of a certain character in Cangjie is not always the one the user has learnt before. Learning Cangjie then entails learning not only Cangjie itself but also unfamiliar standard shapes for some characters. The Cangjie input method editor (IME) does not handle mistakes in decomposition except by informing the user (usually by beeping) that there is a mistake. However, Cangjie is originally designed to assign different codes to different variants of a character. For example, in the Cangjie provided on Windows, the code for 產 is YHHQM, which corresponds not to the shape of this character but to another variant, 産. This is a problem resulting from the implementation of Cangjie on Windows. In the original Cangjie, 產 should be YKMHM (the first part is 文) while 産 is YHHQM (the first part is 产).

Punctuation marks are not geometrically decomposed, but rather given predefined codes that begin with ZX followed by a string of three letters related to the ordering of the characters in the Big5 code. (This set of codes was added to Cangjie on the traditional Chinese version of Windows 95. On Windows 3.1, Cangjie did not have a set of codes for punctuation marks.) Typing punctuation marks in Cangjie thus becomes a frustrating exercise involving either memorization or pick-and-peck. However, this is solved on modern systems through accessing a virtual keyboard on screen (On Windows, this is activated by pressing Ctrl + Alt + comma key).

Commonly-made errors include not considered as alternative codes. For example, if one does not decompose 方 from top to bottom into YHS, but instead type YSH according to stroke order, Cangjie does not return the character 方 as a choice.

Since Cangjie requires all 26 keys of the QWERTY keyboard, it cannot be used to input Chinese characters on feature phones, which have only a 12-key keypad. Alternative input methods, such as Zhuyin, 5-stroke (or 9-stroke by Motorola), and the Q9 input method, are used instead.

Versions

The Cangjie input method is commonly said to have gone through five generations (commonly referred to as "versions" in English), each of which is slightly incompatible with the others. Currently, version 3 (第三代倉頡) is the most common and supported natively by Microsoft Windows. Version 5 (第五代倉頡), supported by the Free Cangjie IME and previously the only Cangjie supported by SCIM, represents a significant minority method and is supported by iOS.

The early Cangjie system supported by the Zero One card on the Apple II was Version 2; Version 1 was never released.

The Cangjie input method supported on the classic Mac OS resembles both Version 3 and Version 5.

Version 5, like the original Cangjie input method, was created directly by Chu. He had hoped that the release of Version 5, originally slated to be Version 6, would bring an end to the "more than ten versions of Cangjie input method" (slightly incompatible versions created by different vendors).

Version 6 has not yet been released to the public, but is being used to create a database which can accurately store every historical Chinese text.

Variants

Most modern implementations of Cangjie input method editors (IME) provide various convenient features:

Some IMEs list all characters beginning with the code you have typed. For example, if you type A, the system gives you all characters whose Cangjie code begins with A, so that you can select the correct character if it is on the screen; if you type another A, the list is shortened to give all characters whose code begins with AA. Examples of such implementations include the IME in Mac OS X, and the Smart Common Input Method (SCIM).
Some IMEs provide one or more wildcard keys, usually but not always * and/or ?, that allow the user to omit part(s) of the Cangjie code; the system will display a list of matching characters for the user to choose. Examples include the X window Chinese INput XIM server (xcin), the Smart Common Input Method (SCIM), and the IME of the Founder Group (University of Peking) typesetting systems. Microsoft Windows's standard "Changjie" IME allows * to substitute for in-between characters (effectively reducing it to Simplified Cangjie entries), while the "New Changjie" IME allows * as a wildcard anywhere except for the first character.
Some IMEs provide an "abbreviation" feature, where impossible Cangjie codes are interpreted as abbreviations for the Cangjie codes of more than one character. This allows more characters to be input with fewer keys. An example is the Smart Common Input Method (SCIM).
Some IMEs provide an "association" (聯想 lianxiang) feature, where the system anticipates what you are going to type next, and provides you with a list of characters or even phrases associated with what the user has typed. An example is the Microsoft "Changjie" IME.
Some IMEs present the list of candidate characters differently, depending on the frequency of character use (how often that character has been typed by the user). An example is the Cangjie IME in the NJStar Chinese word processor.

Besides the wildcard key, many of these features are convenient for casual users but unsuitable for touch-typists because they make the Cangjie IME unpredictable.

There have also been various attempts to "simplify" Cangjie one way or another:

Simplified Cangjie, also known as quick, 簡易; jiǎnyì or 速成; sùchéng, has the same radicals, auxiliary shapes, decomposition rules, and short list of exceptions as Cangjie, but only the first and last codes are used if more than two codes are required in Cangjie.

Applications

Many researchers have discussed ways to decompose Chinese characters into their major components, and tried to build applications based on the decomposition system. The idea can be referred to as the study of the Genes of Chinese Characters [ zh ]. Cangjie codes offer a basis for such an endeavour. Academia Sinica in Taiwan^[6] and Jiaotong University in Shanghai^[7] have similar projects as well.

One direct application of the use of decomposed characters is the possibility of computing the similarities between different Chinese characters.^[8] The Cangjie input method offers a good starting point for this kind of application. By relaxing the limit of five codes for each Chinese character and adopting more detailed Cangjie codes, visually similar characters can be found by computation. Integrating this with pronunciation information enables computer-assisted learning of Chinese characters.^[9]

Notes

Taipei: Chwa! Taiwan Inc. (全華科技圖書公司). 倉頡中文資訊碼 : 倉頡字母、部首、注音三用檢字對照 [The Cangjie Chinese information code : with indexes keyed by Cangjie radicals, Kangxi radicals, and zhuyin]. Publication number 023479. — This is the user manual of an early Cangjie system with a Cangjie controller card.
- The second-to-last paragraph on the first page in the section entitled "The Cangjie radical-based Chinese input method" (倉頡字母中文輸入法) states that
  [Translation]
  This is no problem; there are also auxiliary forms to complement the deficiencies of the radicals. The auxiliary forms are variations of the shape of the radicals, [and therefore] easy to remember.
- The last paragraph on the fifth page in the same section states
  [Translation]
  The dictionary appended [to this book] is based on the 4800 standard, commonly used characters as proclaimed by the Ministry of Education. Adding to this the characters that are automatically generated, the number of characters is about 15,000 (using the Kangxi dictionary as a basis).
Part of the information from this article comes from the equivalent Chinese-language Wikipedia article
The decomposition rules come from the "Friend of Cangjie — Malaysia" web site at http://www.chinesecj.com/ The site also gives the typing speed of experienced typists and provides software for version 5 of the Cangjie method for Microsoft Windows.
It might be difficult to find specific references to the "not error-forgiving" property of Cangjie. The table at https://web.archive.org/web/20050206223713/http://www.array.com.tw/keytool/compete.htm is one external reference that states this fact.
Input.foruto.com has a brief history of the Cangjie input method as seen by that article's author. Versions 1 and 2 are clearly identified in the article.
Cbflabs.com contains a number of articles written by Chu Bong-Foo, with references not only to the Cangjie input method, but also Chinese language computing in general. Versions 5 and 6 (now referred to as 5) of the Cangjie input method are clearly identified.

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References

↑ A spelling used as filename on ETen Chinese System.
↑ Chu, Chyi-Hwa (朱麒華) (1 February 2012). "教育科技的專利與普及". National Academy for Educational Research e-Newsletter (in Chinese). Archived from the original on 25 August 2022. Retrieved 14 December 2022.
↑ Chu Bong-foo (朱邦復). "智慧之旅". 開放文學 (in Traditional Chinese). Archived from the original on 19 October 2017. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
↑ "倉頡取碼規則及方法" [Cangjie code retrieval rules and methods]. Friends of Cangjie (in Chinese). 1997–2002. Archived from the original on 1 January 2019. Retrieved 2 October 2020.
↑ https://www.chinesecj.com/forum/forum.php?mod=attachment&aid=MTIwNnw1MjMxNmQwMXwxNjg2OTYyNTE4fDB8MTUwMjQ%3D page 58
↑ "漢字構形資料庫" [Chinese Character Configuration Database]. Chinese Document Processing Lab (in Chinese). 2013. Archived from the original on 27 July 2020. Retrieved 2 October 2020.
↑ 上海交通大學漢字編碼組,上海漢語拼音文字研究組編著。漢字信息字典。北京市科學出版社，1988。
↑ 宋柔，林民，葛詩利。漢字字形計算及其在校對系統中的應用，小型微型計算機系統，第29卷第10期，第1964至1968頁，2008。
↑ Liu, Chao-Lin; Lai, Min-Hua; Tien, Kan-Wen; Chuang, Yi-Hsuan; Wu, Shih-Hung; Lee, Chia-Ying (2011). "Visually and phonologically similar characters in incorrect Chinese words: Analyses, identification, and applications". ACM Transactions on Asian Language Information Processing. 10 (2): 1–39. doi:10.1145/1967293.1967297. S2CID 7288710.

External links

Online Cangjie Input Method 網上倉頡輸入法
Chinese Character Database: With Word-formations Phonologically Disambiguated According to the Cantonese Dialect at The Chinese University of Hong Kong Research Centre for Humanities Computing: A Chinese character database covering the entire set of Big-5 Chinese characters (5401 Level 1 and 7652 Level 2 Hanzi) as well as 7 additional ETen Hanzi. Cangjie input codes are shown for each character in the database. Note: The Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS - 2001) is not included in this database.
Mingzhu generator (in Chinese): Chu Bong Foo's page. Includes the executable, sourcecode and instructions. Mingzhu is a Canjie character generator that runs on MS Windows.
Friend of the Cangjie: a Cangjie reference and a place where it is possible to download the Cangjie 5 for various operating systems, and Cangjie's supplementary input code lists for inputting the Simplified characters
CjExplorer: a tool for learning Cangjie. The Cangjie code for a highlighted Chinese character will be displayed when the tool is running.
Overview of the Cang-Jie Method: a resource for English speakers to learn the rules and method of Cangjie

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[1] A spelling used as filename on ETen Chinese System.

[2] Chu, Chyi-Hwa (朱麒華) (1 February 2012). "教育科技的專利與普及". National Academy for Educational Research e-Newsletter (in Chinese). Archived from the original on 25 August 2022. Retrieved 14 December 2022.

[3] Chu Bong-foo (朱邦復). "智慧之旅". 開放文學 (in Traditional Chinese). Archived from the original on 19 October 2017. Retrieved 8 June 2017.

[4] "倉頡取碼規則及方法" [Cangjie code retrieval rules and methods]. Friends of Cangjie (in Chinese). 1997–2002. Archived from the original on 1 January 2019. Retrieved 2 October 2020.

[5] ttps://www.chinesecj.com/forum/forum.php?mod=attachment&aid=MTIwNnw1MjMxNmQwMXwxNjg2OTYyNTE4fDB8MTUwMjQ%3D page 58

[6] "漢字構形資料庫" [Chinese Character Configuration Database]. Chinese Document Processing Lab (in Chinese). 2013. Archived from the original on 27 July 2020. Retrieved 2 October 2020.

[7] 上海交通大學漢字編碼組,上海漢語拼音文字研究組編著。漢字信息字典。北京市科學出版社，1988。

[8] 宋柔，林民，葛詩利。漢字字形計算及其在校對系統中的應用，小型微型計算機系統，第29卷第10期，第1964至1968頁，2008。

[9] Liu, Chao-Lin; Lai, Min-Hua; Tien, Kan-Wen; Chuang, Yi-Hsuan; Wu, Shih-Hung; Lee, Chia-Ying (2011). "Visually and phonologically similar characters in incorrect Chinese words: Analyses, identification, and applications". ACM Transactions on Asian Language Information Processing. 10 (2): 1–39. doi:10.1145/1967293.1967297. S2CID 7288710.

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