Apple Adds Chinese Handwriting for Multi-Touch Capable Macs in New Snow Leopard

[Mackan]

太好了！

It makes sense that this should work on multi-touch trackpads since the iPhone can decipher Chinese handwriting.

I'm really looking forward to Snow Leopard.

Probably will only be enabled on the next revision MacBooks, even it works on current ones. Apple has done this type of thing before.

 

[hkechoes]

Please also improve the keyboard Chinese input, too!

As an regular user of Traditional Chinese, I'd much frustrated with the native input methods (Changjei, Jianyi) offered in Leopard. Here are a few shortcomings:

- For Changjei, each Chinese character needs a correct sequence consists of 1-5 keystroke(s). For some characters, the sequence is different in Leopard and in Windows (& in XCIN in linux) so I need to adapt & remember
- The shortkey keys are not useful at all;

It's so badly that I have to use a 3rd party input plugin - Open Vanilla, from http://openvanilla.org/ that helps to make my character input is being consistent between Windows & Leopard.

For multi-touch/iphone Chinese input, it's nice to have the 相關字詞功能 now - pick a character, and it shows a list of the candidate of the next character being expected. I hope the guess shall be able to take consideration of user's previous input and make the guesses more accurate.

 

[magamo]

It is technologically cool, but would it really be faster to draw on the touchpad than to type? Maybe for old people who don't like keyboards?

I've seen Japanese keyboards that have various pen strokes on the keys that they combine to get a character. Also, they can type Japanese using an English keyboard by approximating the sound.

Handwriting recognition isn't meant to type faster per se. It's hard to explain why it's useful, but when you have to use tens of thousands of different characters, you'll know why. The last time I used was when I had to type this name of a place that contains a very rare character that can't be typed by the approximating-the-sound method. Actually mouse-based handwriting recognition has long been available in Windows, and how-do-I-handwrite-an-obscure-character is a frequently asked question from Japanese converts.

 

[bmacir]

new trackpad

I don't know if this has been posted before, but could it be possible that the new 10'' screen is the new keyboard/trackpad (it would work similarly as the nintendo DS) of a new portable mac?

Does this make sense? It would be cool to have a huge multitouch trackpad in place of the keyboard!

 

[djdjek]

I think Mac OSX 10.5.7 will be released next month as the same time as iPhone OS 3.0

 

[MacFly123]

Ya this sounds great.

Now seriously WHAT IS THE DEAL with Apple not being able to fix the no Safari 4 beta bug in 10.5.7??? You're honestly telling me that they can't even get their own software to install after months of coding??? There has to be something we don't know or that I am missing here. Any insight anyone?

 

[Jason Lee]

I will learn Chinese just for this feature.

 

[unid]

(¿) Just wondering (?) about the different ways might be able to integrate multitouch into their desktops, theres been speculation about a trackpad to pair with the keyboard, a multitouch mouse & then i guess there's touchscreen. Do you see it becoming a major feature in the desktop range, can you imagine any other ways it might be used?

 

[SydneyDev]

This is for 10.6, not 10.5.7.

 

[Ensoniq]

Now seriously WHAT IS THE DEAL with Apple not being able to fix the no Safari 4 beta bug in 10.5.7???

I'm guessing the fix will be to release an update to the Safari beta at the same time 10.5.7 is released. Could be the installer is the issue, not 10.5.7 itself.

 

[MikhailT]

Ya this sounds great.

Now seriously WHAT IS THE DEAL with Apple not being able to fix the no Safari 4 beta bug in 10.5.7??? You're honestly telling me that they can't even get their own software to install after months of coding??? There has to be something we don't know or that I am missing here. Any insight anyone?

It has nothing to do with what you thinking, they can fix it in a second if they want. it is a matter of version check.

It is possible that they are instead waiting the final version of iTunes 8.2 and Safari 4 to include it in the 10.5.7 to make it easy for everybody. Yes they could just release it all separately instead. The point is, Apple is waiting for something else first.

 

[designgeek]

It is possible that they are instead waiting the final version of iTunes 8.2 and Safari 4 to include it in the 10.5.7 to make it easy for everybody.

This is entirely possible. I think it would make sense to do that and that could be why it's taking so long, if it really is taking long, I can't remember any of those tables showing release dates for OS updates.

@ t0mat0: Thanks for the link, I keep checking it but nothing yet, they'll probably have it tomorrow. I'm eager to see if they've fixed the version checker on the Safari 4 Beta.

 

[Ping Guo]

It is technologically cool, but would it really be faster to draw on the touchpad than to type? Maybe for old people who don't like keyboards?

I've seen Japanese keyboards that have various pen strokes on the keys that they combine to get a character. Also, they can type Japanese using an English keyboard by approximating the sound.

My guess would be no, it won't be faster. The Japanese keyboard you describe sounds like the Wubi input method used by speed typists in China. The Wubi keyboard is QWERTY with additional labels, divided into five areas for different types of pen strokes: left-falling, right-falling, horizontal, vertical, and hook. You "spell" a character by typing out up to four strokes, in the order in which you'd draw them on paper. A skilled Wubi typist can produce up to 160 characters per minute!

The common input used by most computer users in China uses a standard QWERTY keyboard and is based on Pinyin, whereby Chinese words are transliterated using the roman alphabet. To create a character, you type the sound in Pinyin, and the computer converts it to the correct Chinese character. But, there are many words that sound the same in Chinese, but use different tones and have different characters. In these cases, there are a couple solutions: the typist can put a numeral, 1-4, after the Pinyin word, to indicate which of the four tones is used in the word. The one I see most often works a lot like predictive text on a mobile, the software just gives it's "best guess" based on context, or offers a grid of possible characters from which the user chooses one.

In any case, these input methods are fast, often much faster than writing out the strokes oneself, and have been thought through pretty well. I don't see character recognition adding much functionality, as it would be far slower for the average Chinese user.

 

[RexTraverse]

In any case, these input methods are fast, often much faster then writing out the strokes oneself, and have been thought through pretty well. I don't see character recognition adding much functionality, as it would be far slower for the average Chinese user.

Agree that handwriting recognition is gimmicky as a practical input method for native Chinese users. Most any Chinese person under 60 with a modicum of computer experience can input in Pinyin or Zhuyin much faster than handwriting.

It is, however, a good tool for anyone learning the language or as a character identification tool. I mean, if you see a character you don't recognize, you therefore have no idea what it sounds like, and Zhuyin and Pinyin input is pretty useless. Even the world's greatest Chinese linguists don't know all the characters.

 

[t0mat0]

I don't know if this has been posted before, but could it be possible that the new 10'' screen is the new keyboard/trackpad (it would work similarly as the nintendo DS) of a new portable mac?

Does this make sense? It would be cool to have a huge multitouch trackpad in place of the keyboard!

Or to complement it? There was a thread around MWSF 2008 about it - can't find the link but if you search multitouch for threads around June 2008 it should be there
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/485248/ amongst others
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=6130979
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/438408/

 

[nanoboy]

Windows 7 is getting (multi?) touch capability, there's no reasons why Snow Leopard will lag behind!!

That's great news, that's the final piece I need to finally get my parents a mac and get rid of their chunky PC. My mum prefers hand writing Chinese than typing.

Will this increase the popularity of Macs in the Chinese speaking world? Or is the majority of that population skilled at typing the characters with keyboard anyway?

Another good use for this I can think of is signing digital signature!

Does that mean a stylus would be used to draw on the trackpad? Stylus is not Apple's style. Can't imagine a large multi-touch screen on the macbook is feasible anytime soon either. Intrigued. They'd probably come up with a cool way to deal with multi-touch inputs.

 

[t0mat0]

Windows 7 is getting (multi?) touch capability, there's no reasons why Snow Leopard will lag behind!!

That's great news, that's the final piece I need to finally get my parents a mac and get rid of their chunky PC. My mum prefers hand writing Chinese than typing.

Will this increase the popularity of Macs in the Chinese speaking world? Or is the majority of that population skilled at typing the characters with keyboard anyway?

Another good use for this I can think of is signing digital signature!

Does that mean a stylus would be used to draw on the trackpad? Stylus is not Apple's style. Can't imagine a large multi-touch screen on the macbook is feasible anytime soon either. Intrigued. They'd probably come up with a cool way to deal with multi-touch inputs.

They had a patent where the multi-touch was the entire front part of the laptop surface before the bottome row of keys, and software worked out random palm presses to not count them as gestures.

reading on the Engineering Windows 7 blog gives some indication as to where Microsoft is on this tech - the demos look pretty good and there's been time spent on this at least from Redmond. With Apple actually having a few million Touch and iPhone multi-touch devices, would be nice to think they're at least at the same place software and hardware wise than Microsoft.

 

[PDE]

As an regular user of Traditional Chinese, I'd much frustrated with the native input methods (Changjei, Jianyi) offered in Leopard. Here are a few shortcomings:

- For Changjei, each Chinese character needs a correct sequence consists of 1-5 keystroke(s). For some characters, the sequence is different in Leopard and in Windows (& in XCIN in linux) so I need to adapt & remember
- The shortkey keys are not useful at all;

It's so badly that I have to use a 3rd party input plugin - Open Vanilla, from http://openvanilla.org/ that helps to make my character input is being consistent between Windows & Leopard.

For multi-touch/iphone Chinese input, it's nice to have the 相關字詞功能 now - pick a character, and it shows a list of the candidate of the next character being expected. I hope the guess shall be able to take consideration of user's previous input and make the guesses more accurate.

Have you tried 　　http://www.macqim.com/RegQIME.html ?

It's an excellent pingyin input methd that is much better than that available through the macos. The company doesn't produce a cangjie or jianyi input software though....

I'm actually quite excited about being able to use multitouch for Chinese input on my MBP. the iphone input for Chinese is really good in that I can write semi-cursive and most of the time get the character as an option in the list to the right, even if it's not always (but very often) the first option. Having that system on the mac will make it easy to look up characters I don't know quickly, rather than have to search by stroke number,radical etc. Even for native speakers/writers, I think that could be useful. Of course using the keyboard will always be faster, especially if you're using the more predictive input methods.

Anyway, check out the link above for a great pinyin input plugin.

 

[MrCrowbar]

I sometimes open the character pallette and copy paste characters I don't know how to type. This is useful for foreign languages and technical stuff. Would be neat to be able to draw something on the trackpad, for example the greek letter "Pi" and a little menu pops up with the closest matches.

PS: Yes, I know, ∏ cab be entered with ALT+Shift+P

 

[bobbleheadbob]

But when will Sanskrit and Ancient Aramaic handwriting recognition be available? That's what we really want!

 

[AtlasBoy]

Ya this sounds great.

Now seriously WHAT IS THE DEAL with Apple not being able to fix the no Safari 4 beta bug in 10.5.7??? You're honestly telling me that they can't even get their own software to install after months of coding??? There has to be something we don't know or that I am missing here. Any insight anyone?

The installer does a version check to see what version of osx is running and will not install on 10.5.7. It takes about 2 minutes to remove the validation and retest the installer. So it's not a technical / coding issue (I have this from a friend at Apple). I'm not sure why they did this as my friend would not comment on that. It has been widely reported that if you have Safari beta one installed on 10.5.6, and upgrade to 10.5.7, Safari beta still works. They are just stopping you from doing a new install on 10.5.7. I guess it will all become clear at some point.

 

[Bubba Satori]

I, for one, welcome our Chinese overlords.

 

[amac4me]

Bring on the touch screen Macs

 

[AtlasBoy]

I'm curious to know what's in the release notes of 10.5.7 and/or Snow Leopard. Did they add anything? Fix anything? Anybody know?

 

[wizard]

I could guess here.

............... They are just stopping you from doing a new install on 10.5.7. I guess it will all become clear at some point.

Here are a few possible guesses:

1.
Apple is working on a Safari with a process per tab. This should make for a more robust and faster browsing experience. The multi processing improvements in SL ought to really help here.

2.
Apple might have a version of Safari that leverages OPenCL in new ways. One possibility is that the new HTML 5 tags for movies and media get directly accelerated on the GPU. Of course Quicktime is being extensively overhauled so the excelleration could come via that facility. Either way better playback of video should be the result.

3.
Maybe Apple has some more Java Script improvements that they have decided to make SL only.

4.
Apple could always just be lazy and doesn't want to upgrade the installer for this round of betas. I discount this idea a lot though as it is traditional for them to hold back features until much closer to release date.


These are guesses obviously and I'm likely missing something but I maintain there is something up. Maybe it is some sort of integration with that Chinese hand writing recognition software. ( didn't want to pull the thread off course ).



Dave