From: lai@Apple.COM (Ed Lai)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china
Subject: Re: pinyin reform
Date: 24 Dec 92 15:39:28 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA

rap@doc.ic.ac.uk writes:
>I once attended a talk by an IBM fellow who was associated with this
>work, which I believe began with a series of experiments by Yamada in the
>early 70's.  The crucial point was that the association between pairs of
>keystrokes and characters had no discernable pattern.  They found that
>working out which keys to strike from some association with the shape
>or sound of the character slowed the typist down considerably.  I, like
>most people I expect, found it incredible that typists should be able
>to memorize 36x36 = 1296, or more, such arbitrary associations, but the
>experiments showed that it was feasible, and Yamada even worked out the
>best way to teach the table.  This was the fastest method ever developed
>for Japanese (kanji + kana), but the Japanese government stopped funding
>Yamada's work.  The work of Yamada and IBM in this area have produced
>no popular product; it seems there is considerable resistance to the idea.

I mentioned this work to show it is feasiable, but I do not agree with Yamada's
approach. A random mapping may very well be the fastest, but it obviously
is only for the professionally trained who constantly use the system. And
even used as a professional system it has its drawback. It is a false
assumption that there is a distinct expert vs novice dichotomy. In fact
everyone is a little bit of both and the same person can move be a different
point on the expert/novice line at different time. A random mapping offers
no graceful degradation of expertness, and there is why there can be no
real product from there. That does not mean a two-stroke input method
would not work. It just means that it is not implemented right. The
implementation of most Chinese input method are really quite poor,
especially Human interface aspect. The one I wrote myself pay more 
attension to this but it still has a long way to go. I think Chinese computing
will be better served if we stop trying to invent new input method but
try to take the basic existing idea and do a nice implementation.

In Hong Kong, I understand the input method of choice of typesetting is Tsangchi.
Do the typesetter use the character discompostion rule to get the coding
and type it in. Of course not, basically after intense use they more or less
memorize the coding (not necessary consciously, if you ask them the coding
of a particular character, it would be slower and less accurate than if they
just see the character and type). That is why they can type so fast. The
encoding rule is just a fall back position, it allows for graceful degradation
of non-expertness. However isn't it silly to type in five key when you
do it faster with two-stroke input method. A well designed input method
should not be randomly mapped, but allows some general guideline for
graceful degradation, and it should have escape key to fall back to a
completely rule based input method just in case. As for the question of the
sufficiency of 1296 characters, the cumulative probability of the most
frequently used 1296 characters is very high, and remember there is the
escape key fall back to the other characters, and the cost is only one extra
key compare to a normal input method.

>Not quite, as the mapping isn't arbitrary -- when typing from copy, the
>typist has to use a different part of the brain to convert from the shape
>of the character to the sound, and this is slower. 

As I said before, I don't believe in an absolute expert/novice dichotomy.
This means that every one of us, even for a novice, and regardless of
whether we are using Hanzi or an alphabetical language, to some extent
we just type it and don't go through word to sound mapping. So something
like ShuangPin is either a phonetic input method or a two stroke input
method, depending on the particular state of the mind of user at that
moment.

>This is another, longer term, issue.  People who use phonetic input
>methods to input characters also tend to forget how to write the
>characters, though they can still recognize them: they are still
>doing lots of reading, but little writing.  (This is the experience
>with Japanese phonetic input methods: the handwriting of people who use
>such methods all day goes down the drain, and they are always looking up
>characters they have forgotten how to write.)  In fact, such typists are
>being trained in the alphabetic representation of Chinese.  So perhaps
>such input methods are an insidious threat to the future of hanzi.

I am not worry about this at all. It is the final result that counts, not
how you generate it. With the advance of the computer, the way graphic,
music, animation are written in completly different way, but that does
not means the disappearance of grahic, music or animation. In fact in
future I hope my "input method" to this article is to instruct the
computer to consult something I wrote previously or some other people's
paper and extract the relevant information appropiate as a response to
your article. This does not means the end of English language. The basic
issue what final form does people prefer, Hanzi or pinyin. Try to read
an article written in Hanzi and another one written in pinyin, I think
the choice is very obvious. That is why alt.chinese.text is so popular.

In fact I think the reverse is true. If we don't have the microcomputer
revolution where production of Hanzi article becomes much easier (we
are not quite there yet but we are getting there). The existence of
Hanzi would be threatend. Twenty year back when the best means of
writing is the typewriter and computer database cannot have Hanzi,
there are good reason to use pinyin instead of Hanzi. Fortunately the
technology revolution has almost bring us to the point where this
is irrevelant. If anyone is interested in ensuring the survival of Hanzi,
my advice is to keep pursuing the use of Hanzi in computer. Don't try
to invent new input method but improve the implementation and
human interface of existing one. Don't spend all the time on input method
or word processing. What really will count is the ease of naviagation
in an electronic Hanzi information database.

/* Disclaimer: All statments and opinions expressed are my own */
/* Edmund K. Lai                                               */
/* Apple Computer, MS37-UP                                     */
/* 20525 Mariani Ave,                                          */
/* Cupertino, CA 95014                                         */
/* (408)974-6272                                               */
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