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From: acli@byron.net4.io.org (Ambrose Li)
Subject: Pinyin
Message-ID: <E43u26.LpC@byron.net4.io.org>
Supersedes: <E43tL4.LK6@byron.net4.io.org>
Organization: somewhere in Scarborough, Canada running C News CR.E and some assorted hacks for NNTP (including a hacked nntpxmit derived from NNTP 1.5.12)
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 1997 14:10:52 GMT
References: <32C892DC.1BDD@scruznet.com> <5b3dvd$rhc@gap.cco.caltech.edu> <E3tqKu.IyG@byron.net4.io.org> <5bgnl3$jl@gap.cco.caltech.edu>
Lines: 41

On 14 Jan 1997 19:43:31 GMT, in article <5bgnl3$jl@gap.cco.caltech.edu>, Wei-Hwa Huang <whuang@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>acli@byron.net4.io.org (Ambrose Li) writes:
>>Why is this so special? [...]
>>For example, Cangjie uses 25 to 26 English letters, ren2 is entered
>>with an O, ko3 is R, and shi2 is J....
>
>What makes this special, which you would have noticed if you read carefully,
                                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
                                             Did you read mine carefully? :^)
>is that the radicals are BASED ON THE ROMAN ALPHABET.

While sdlee pointed out my ignorance regarding what "based on the
Roman alphabet" means for this "wangma", still,

>This means that you don't need a specially marked keyboard; the standard
>QWERTY layout becomes a mnemonic system.

Cangjie, Dayi, and Wubi (and others I'm sure) also do not require
specially-marked keyboards. With Dayi, it might be a little bit
difficult, since it has more than 26 radicals, though.

Both Cangjie has a standard, surjective but almost bijective,
mapping between its radicals and the Roman alphabet.  So while
it is technically wrong (as sdlee points out) to say that "ren2"
is "entered with an O", it is correct to say that the "ren2"
radical is equivalent to an "O" under the standard Cangjie
keyboard mapping.  Wubi has a bijective standard mapping between
its radicals and the Roman alphabet, so you don't need a specially-
marked keyboard for Wubi either.

Specially-marked keyboards are nice, but are not required if you
know the keyboard mappings, because the mappings are bijective.

(I think one of the original design objectives of Cangjie is to
allow the user to use an ordinary English keyboard. However, I
have to dig out my manuals later to check this out.)


-- 
Ambrose Li ~ @io.org:acli@byron.net4.io.org   (Hello, world !\n)
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