Ack! What is wrong with Mac's Chinese IME? I recently moved from Windows, which has a very decent IME. Is Apple's pathetic attempt really as bad as it seems, or am I just making a very big mistake? I could not even find documentation on the Chinese input mode. Chinese input on the Mac is virtually unusable. Please help!
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Simplified Chinese character input
- Thread starter garblot
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From my preliminary investigation on Chinese/Japanese IME on Mac OS X, I was fairly satisfied but now that you've flagged it up, I think I will have to look again. It's vital that I am able to deal with these languages quickly and accurately as I'm going to be doing a degree in Chinese + Japanese next year.
It seems to work the same as Windows - you start your application, pick the input method from the menu bar (near the clock) and then start typing. As you complete a word, hit space bar or enter and OS X will add the kanji/hanzi as appropriate.
What is the difficulty that you seem to be encountering?
It seems to work the same as Windows - you start your application, pick the input method from the menu bar (near the clock) and then start typing. As you complete a word, hit space bar or enter and OS X will add the kanji/hanzi as appropriate.
What is the difficulty that you seem to be encountering?
It simply seems to work improperly; take, for example, the verb to be, shi. You type "shi4" for a fourth-tone shi. This extremely common character should be the first to pop up, and yet it doesn't even show up in the list of possibilities. What's wrong? I'm not even sure that the characters displayed are fourth-tone shis. (I've had only a year of Chinese lessons.) One looked like zhi. Does OS X think my keyboard is laid out differently than it really is? It shouldn't, for it is built into the computer.
I didn't have so much trouble with Windows.
I didn't have so much trouble with Windows.
garblot said:
Ah, I see where you're coming from. Unfortunately I've not started my Chinese learning yet so can't corroborate your findings. But do you actually need to type in "shi4"? I thought you just typed your sentence and OS X was clever enough to put the correct characters in according to the context? I've never typed any numbers in after the characters to depict tone - after all the characters themselves don't show tone marks?? So try typing "shi" by itself and see what comes up?
garblot said:
Phew. Glad you're sorted. I can take my Macbook to uni with peace of mind once again.
