[Scim-devel] Re: SmartCangjie6 input method 快倉六輸入法

[Quintus L. <qu...@sc...>]

Dear Ronald,

I try to explain the difference between the mentioned CangJie input
methods although I am not an expert in Chinese input methods.

> Quintus Leung wrote:
>>Dear Ronald,
>>
>>Thank you for putting SmartCangjie6 into the SCIM SVN.  The input
>>method will benefit users who are familiar with Cangjie input method.
>>
>>Best regards,
>>Quintus
>
> Dear Quintus Leung,
>
> I have some questions about SmartCangjie6
> I hope that you can find some time for answering them.
> On this moment there are the next input-methods:
> CangJie for simplified chinese
> CangJie3 for simplified chinese
> CangJie for traditional chinese
>
> and now
> SmartCangjie6
>
> I hope that you can tell the difference between them
>
> (there is also a wikipedia-page about input methods:)
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_input_methods_for_computers
>

Cangjie input method was invented by Mr CHU Bong Foo in 1970's.  The
original design was for Traditional Chinese characters only and the most
widely adopted version is ver. 3 (CangJie3) even nowadays.  In 1987,
version 5 (CangJie5) was created with support for both Traditional and
Simplified Chinese characters. Since the rules and graphical unit
representations of CangJie3 and CangJie5 are slightly different, most
people still prefer to use the old CangJie3.  Therefore, both CangJie3 and
CangJie5 exist in the Linux input method platforms.

I seldom come across the term "CangJie3 for Simplified Chinese", it seems
a table converted from CangJie3 (for Traditional Chinese) to support
Simplified Chinese.

SmartCangjie6 is a derived version of CangJie input method. It was created
by Mr MAK Che Hung. The method simplifies the rules and increases the
error tolerance by giving multiple input key set to a character. 
Moreover, it re-orders the character selection based on common Chinese
language usage (the frequency).  SmartCangjie6 also includes the codes of
Cangjie3, Cangjie5, Quick and Cantonese input methods making users easy to
input a Chinese character in various ways.

With the advantages of SmartCangjie6, I recommend SCIM to include the
input method.

> Another question is:
> how is the structure of the table.
> this is a small part of it:
> a	日	500
> a	曰	499
> a	是	498
>
> what are the three colums?
>

The three columns are
input_keys      aim_chars       freq

In fact, I have created a txt which can be used with scim-make-table
at
http://www.scj2000.net/Linux/scim/source/SmartCangJie6.txt
and the PNG icon at
http://www.scj2000.net/Linux/scim/source/SmartCangJie6.png
The SVG icon can be downloaded from
http://www.scj2000.net/src/scj6.svg

Thanks,
Quintus