Chinese IME - Tips, Tricks and Setup - What do you use?
rich
February 12, 2008 at 06:57 AM posted in General DiscussionIME - Input Method Editor
The week before last I wrote on another thread in answer to evelyne's question on how to even input Chinese characters about MS-Pinyin IME, more specifically "How do I pick a character if the one chosen is incorrect?"
I've been familiar with setting up IME's since Windows 98, as that was actually my first interest in Chinese. Now with Windows XP/Vista one doesn't have to download anything to get it to work, but you do have to turn Asian languages and the IME on. I thought I would make this a new thread as I am sure there is something I could also learn from you on this IME or others for typing Chinese (I have tried many others, but as a foreigner, I didn't see them as convenient as Chinese people do). Below is what I wrote on IME, and hope to get your feedback, questions or tips on your IME experirence.
I highly recommend you use MS-Pinyin IME, which comes with Windows XP and I assume you are using. I have tried all the input locals and while some Chinese people prefer others, even learning the radicals represented by each key of the keyboard for WuBiZiXing(五笔字型), still the best for those of us who used pinyin to learn to type .
With MS-Pinyin IME, the one thing to note is that you can specify the tone mark as well as the pinyin letters when you type. This I recommend doing because for one, it greatly reduces the number of characters you have to chose from (or possibilities of mistakes), as well as helps you a) verify that you know the tone of the character because if it doesn't have that tone it won't display and b) allows you to see all the characters of that tone (which I believes helps in character learning, to match same sound/tone characters... I tell you how to view them below). So, for the word you said, to get the character 谢 I can get it without having to pick the character...all I type is xie4. You can type 1-5, 5 being neutral. (I get 斜 when I type xie5, the only neutral xie)
However, whether or not specifying tones, I greatly encourage you to not pick character to character, or even word for word, as MS-Pinyin IME can pick the most likely character from the other characters you type. So in your case, if you are using MS-Pinyin, if you simply type "xiexie" it should know you want 谢谢 as 写写 is not a word (but I do get that automatically if I type xie3xie3)
Now, to answer your question on how to pick a character, which you will still have to do now and then even if you use tones and type out complete words. After typing "xie" or "xie4", you can press the LEFT arrow key (not the mouse button) to see all the characters of that pronunciation. If you do not see the character you want in that list of 9 characters, press the PAGE-DOWN or PAGE-UP key to see others if available. When you see the character you want you can either press it's corresponding number (1-9) or press the DOWN arrow key to change the highlighted character to the right (use UP to move it to the left) and hit ENTER when you have found the character (I usually use this method, as usually the character I want is right there, and I already have my hand over the arrow keys).
So, here are some outlined tips on using MS-Pinyin IME:
1) Make sure you type the tone of a character, such as xie2zi5 鞋子 or xie3zi4 写字. Less chance of it being the wrong character, or MS-Pinyin deciding to change your character to its best guess (sometimes it even changes characters that haven't been specifically chosen when you hit the punctuation mark... don't ask me why)
2) Type the WHOLE word of phrase, as MS-Pinyin is most likely to guess it right then.
3) MS-Pinyin LEARNS what you type, so even for your Chinese name you should only have to type it once. The first time I type my name, Meng YiMing, it usually choses 梦已名 (dream already named??? no, that's not it). So once I type meng4yi3ming2 I click the LEFT arrow 3 times, and select 孟, it automatically moves to the next character and I select 以, then I select 明. Now, if I type that again, even if without tones, "mengyiming", I get 孟以明.
4) Did you know you can change between simplified and traditional characters, as well as Chinese punctuation and English punctuation? ：‘’“”etc.? Just click the CH (or EN) of the Language bar, select "Show the Language bar" (should then float up at the top in your window's title bar), and you should either see a punctuation and simplified/traditional button there, or you can click the little down arrow at the bottom right of that floating toolbar and select Charset for trad/simp, Punctuation, or whatever.
Again, I'm not an expert, so please let me know what you've picked up on typing characters. Thanks!
amders
November 20, 2008 at 08:20 PM
hello, i want to know how to spell the girlfriend (nu peng you) pinyin in windows, my friend said using "ny" but after i type "n" i can't type "y" or any special char for "u". thanks.
goulnik
April 02, 2008 at 02:23 PM@billgloveruk, I do use 谷歌拼音输入法, the Google input method and I think it's quite good. The only thing is you apparently can't type in pinyin tones, but it works very well, it's been discussed in another thread a few times before.
billglover
April 02, 2008 at 11:16 AM
@wei1xiao4: I must be getting old as I too think that the default size for these characters is way too small. It can be really hard to find some characters and I have seen my girlfriend (who grew up typing chinese) scrolling around in the lists looking for the correct characters. Admittedly she does this far less often than I do, but it is a noticeable problem.
I've just installed the free trial of QIM for the Mac and it allows you to set not only the font size, but also the text and background colours. This feature alone is enough to make me consider paying for the product.
Does anyone else know of a product that does this for Windows? And, no mention of the Google input method? Does this mean it isn't very good?
zeoblade
April 02, 2008 at 09:57 AM
typing in pinyin is great fun, best study tool to help with differentiating which characters are pronounced like pin and ping. what i want to learn is how to write the tones over the primary vowels for note taking so i can teach other beginners what i just learnt
marchey
April 02, 2008 at 09:01 AM
On my windows system (XP) I use the MS IME and I think it sucks. So I would be glad to hear from a decent alternative that is not too difficult to set up (= not in Chinese).
Why do I think MS IME sucks? Well 2 main reasons actually:
(1) I can not set it up to work with my Azerty keyboard. Microsoft seems to have forgotten that not everybody in the world uses an American style Qwerty keyboard. I am used to it now, but it is very akward because I have to switch every time I switch languages. When I want to to type a sentence like 王先生，你好吗？ I actually type "zqng xiqnsheng; nihqo,q+"... So you see where the problem is? I have been looking around, but as far as I understand the keyboard is hard coded in the IME. If someone knows of a way to change this, i would love to hear about it;
(2) There is some very strange behavihour. Like the discussion about inputting the tones. I have set up my system so that I am always prompted with a list from which I pick the right character. To achieve this I have the option "Prompt step by step" activated. But this option is only available when "Conversion Mode" is set to "Sentence", meaning that I don't have the possibility to input tonemarks...just like Mike. When I choose for "Conversion Mode" = "word", then the option to get prompted is greyed out and I have to press Enter before I get to see the list. Cumbersome and not very convenient because I make too many mistakes against tones.
Also, I have the option "Enable Learning" switched on, but up till now I haven't noticed anything about this. Some characters that I use frequently are always in the same place in the list. Example: I have a friend called "书宇". After the many e-mails I have written to her, I should expect her name to be in the drop down list. Not so. Shu corresponds to "书", top of the list, but the "宇" is still somewhere on the 2nd page of the list....
Marc
ewong
February 16, 2008 at 08:11 AM
hi tvan and rich, i finally found the charset for traditional chinese! thanks for your help
tvan
February 15, 2008 at 09:43 PM
Ewong, I'm a Mac person myself and no expert on Windows. However, my school's computers all have an option for "Hong Kong" or traditional Chinese, so its out there. Insofar as how to get it, hopefully someone else with more knowledge of Windows can chip in.
rich
February 15, 2008 at 04:52 PM
hmm.. I ａｍ ｏｎ Ｗｉｎｄｏｗｓ ＸＰ ａｎｄ ｅｖｅｒｙ ＸＰ ｓｙｓｔｅｍ Ｉ ｕｓｅ （ｏｆｔｅｎ ｕｓｉｎｇ ｔｈｅ ｓｃｈｏｏｌ＇ｓ，ｍｙ ｌａｐｔｏｐ ａｎｄ ａ ｄｅｓｋｔｏｐ）ｔｈｅｙ ａｌｌ ｈａｖｅ ｔｈｅ ｓａｍｅ ＭＳ－Ｐｉｎｙｉｎ．
bokane
February 15, 2008 at 01:29 PM
Weixiao -- on some IMEs (for example, the QIM IME on the Mac) there's an option to customize font size in the character candidate window if you go into the preferences. I don't think the Microsoft IME makes this an option, though.
ewong
February 15, 2008 at 04:55 AM
thanks rich,
i'm using MS Pinyin 3.0. there is a window for the setting "text services and input languages". I have added Chinese PRC- chinese (simplified) MS Pinyin. there is no option for chinese (traditional) MS Pinyin.
thanks again
rich
February 14, 2008 at 11:45 PM
ewong:
YES! ＭS-Pinyin IME lets you easily switch between simplified and traditional form. Just by going to the little pull-down menu for the language bar, you should see a "Charset" as an icon you can click. It shows "简" in the icon for 简体字 （ｓｉｍｐｌｉｆｉｅｄ） and "繁“ ｆｏｒ 繁體字 （繁体字 ｔｒａｄｉｔｉｏｎａｌ）
wei1xiao4
February 14, 2008 at 07:26 AM
OK here's a question for us older folks. I have a really hard time discerning which characters to choose because they are so small and I can't always make out all the strokes. Is there a way to increase the size of the suggested hanzi when the bar comes up? That would be a huge help. Anyone else having that issue?
ewong
February 14, 2008 at 01:51 AM
can you input pinyin and get the traditional chinese characters instead of the simplified?
rich
February 13, 2008 at 04:09 PM
Mikeinewshot, no actually I have "Sentence" selected like i said... and I prefer that over "Word". Weird that yours now works. When I did "Word" and typed "ni3" for 你 I got 尼 or something.
mikeinewshot
February 13, 2008 at 01:55 PM
Hold on!
I have found out how to input tone numbers to reduce the list.
You select Conversion Mode = Word
NOT Conversion Word = Sentence
Rich - did you make a mistake above or do we have systems that work in opposite ways?
RJ
February 13, 2008 at 10:09 AM
Thanks Rich, I never knew you could use tones to shorten the list. Great help and a great habit to get into for learning to remember tones.
-RJ
wei1xiao4
February 13, 2008 at 06:56 AM
Thanks, Rich. I never knew all the details. I am pretty much computer illiterate, so this was a huge help.
lostinasia
February 13, 2008 at 05:50 AM
Wow there are lots of options buried inside the different entry methods. Thanks for the points, and thanks Phil for explaining the mystery.
I've downloaded QIM and am giving it a try--there is a free trial, which I don't believe is clearly indicated on their website. It seems pretty cool--definitely faster, although it doesn't provide the tone-reminder reinforcement that I probably should inflict upon myself.
Rich, for Mac's pinyin, if you choose Pinyin, then go to Preferences/ Typing, and then turn off dynamic prompt, you'll be able to type the tones. By the way, if you DON'T know the tone, you can just type the pinyin, then [space bar], and it'll show you all the options in order of frequency.
mikeinewshot
February 12, 2008 at 05:03 PM
Hi Rich
Thanks for your reply
Well I have got it set to Sentence.
I have:
Input Mode = Full pinyin
Conversion Mode = Sentence
Actually if you look at this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/handson/user/IME_Paper.mspx
some way down where it shows you how to input 女儿 it explains it just the way mine works, not the way yours works.
Any thoughts?
rich
February 12, 2008 at 04:21 PM
As for my Mac question, yeah I got that figured out after I wrote it, as that got me to look into it... plus I then noticed the little British flag in the top right (this being in Britain) and assumed that was the Language/Input Locale, found it was even easier to add then in Windows. If I use the pinyin input method, I realized one couldn't specify tones like I can in Windows, but I am pretty sure when I tried it I could type something like buzhidao and it guessed the phrase, but I could be mistaken (not at the computer now).
Mikeinewshot, as for you not being able to specify the tones, and assuming you are using MS-Pinyin IME for Windows XP, all I can figure out, playing with the properties of the IME is that if you have "Conversion Mode" set to "Word" and not "Sentence" it behaves like you say, so this should be set to "Sentence" which Ｉ highly recommend. Let me know what your properties are set to... open the language bar (clicking on the "CH" square, select "Show Language Bar" if it doesn't already show it) see if you have the "Context menu" and if not click the little down arrow to get the options, select "Context menu", then click on the Context menu button and select properties....that is where you can control how it behaves.
Did you have it set to Word or Sentence?
phil
February 12, 2008 at 04:12 PM
LostInAsia,
If you link to a conversation from a feedreader, the author of the comment that you link from replaces the originator of the conversation. It's an "Iceberg" thing that has not been fixed.
tvan
February 12, 2008 at 03:43 PM
LostinAsia, if you go to your link above it mentions an IME called QIM. It is shareware, costs around $20 US, and does what you're asking.
http://glider.ismac.cn/RegQIME.html
There's also an IME called OpenVanilla not mentioned in the Yale site that has some free, useful language tools.
http://openvanilla.org/?English
QIM is the only tool I've found that does what you want on the Mac using Pinyin. If you do decide to download it, make sure you also download QIT. It is a complementary product that improves the "guesses" on which characters fit which Pinyin string.
lostinasia
February 12, 2008 at 02:21 PM
Hmm. Looks like there are more options than I realized. This website...
http://www.yale.edu/chinesemac/pages/tcim_x4.html
... has a lot more information and detail. It looks like Hanin, with Roman input, can get some of the functionality you talk about above. And now I've figured out how I can use type the tones as well.
(Incidentally, why can't I see the name of the person who started the thread?! Currently I see mikeinewshot's profile, I guess because he's the most recent poster besides me. I'm assuming Rich started this, but I'm not sure.)
lostinasia
February 12, 2008 at 01:42 PM
For Macs: do you mean simply type in Chinese? Go into System Preferences / International, and then select Chinese in the Language Tab (using "Edit List"), and in the Input Menu Tab select the input methods you want. I can be more specific if you want, but I suspect that wasn't really your question.
If someone knows how to type on a Mac using the method described at the start of the thread, I second the request--I'd love to know how to type that way! On my Mac I'm "stuck with" typing "xie", selecting 謝, and then either typing "xie" again (or choosing from what my computer thinks should come next). It'd be really sweet to just type "buzhidao" and get 不知道, rather than selecting characters every step of the way. I can't type tone marks either, which becomes a nightmare when I have to scroll through all of the qī qí qǐ qì characters.
mikeinewshot
February 12, 2008 at 12:33 PM
Rich
What am I doing wrong? When I try to specify the tone with a number, instead of reducing the set of possibilities, it just gives me the character corresponding to the number in the list.
For example: if I type 'shi1' I get 是。 If I type shi2, I get 十
（which is the second in the list)
Help
rich
February 12, 2008 at 10:20 AM
ANY MAC USERS OUT THERE?
Oddly, after starting this thread, I realized that I still can't type on the Mac I use often (on it right now actually) that is in the Chinese library in my department. I know how on university Window machines how to easily add the IME for Chinese, yet nooooo clue on Apples. Can anyone tell me how on a Mac 10.4.11 I can do this? Can it be done without installing any software or having the OS discs? I don't have admin privileges to install on uni computers.
amders
November 25, 2008 at 12:36 PM@tvan
thank you so much...