[Uim] uim-prime vs. anthy (also, possible help for uim-py)

[Duncan Mak]

On Fri, 2004-04-02 at 16:26, TOKUNAGA Hiroyuki wrote:
> I think there is a problem. The problem is that, is there a dictionary
> which we can use? We can use only the dictionaries which can be
> compliant with BSD license, because license of uim is BSD license.

I dunno. I can ask my friends in Hong Kong if they know of any exisiting
free dictionaries. I also seem to remember Emacs having a pretty usable
system, maybe they have a dictionary there?

> And I have a question. I learned from some web pages that popular way to
> input traditional Han characters is ZhuYin, PinYin is not major way to
> input traditional Han characters. Is this true? Should we implement
> ZhuYin to support Big5?

A bit of history here:

Pinyin is a system for writing Chinese with the alphabet. You type in
the characters by how it is pronounced in Mandarin. It is the standard
system in use in Mainland China, Singapore and also in Hong Kong (only
partly, as Cantonese is more prominent).

Zhuyin is a system used only in Taiwan, it is also based on the
pronunciation of Mandarin, and occasionally used to "phonetically" write
sounds in the Taiwanese dialect (Hokkien) that have no real characters,
similar to how katakana is used to write out sounds in Japanese. Zhuyin
is a system created to emulate the Japanese hiragana/katakana system, I
think. I've learned Zhuyin when I was a kid learning Mandarin, because
my teachers were from Taiwan, but I've forgotten all of it now, as it is
not used at all outside of Taiwan.

The reason why Zhuyin seems to be popular for typing traditional
characters is because the only Chinese communities that use trad.
characters are Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Chinatowns around the world.
In terms of influence, Hong Kong isn't really that big a place, and the
Chinatowns around the world are even smaller, so Zhuyin becomes the more
noticible input method for traditional characters.

Personally, I think Zhuyin is a waste. If someone wants it, they can
probably implement it on top of a Pinyin system.

In general, I was told that the sound-based input methods (Pinyin,
Zhuyin, Cantonese, etc) are mostly used by novices and occasional users.
Most power users, people who type Chinese every day, seem to prefer
stroke-based approaches. I think this page provides a pretty good
summary:

	http://www.honco.net/japanese/05/page3.html

Hope this helps!

Duncan.