He quickly determined that if he could outsource the Exchange server to a host at a reasonable cost, he might be able to satisfy all the project requirements. The Chinese are credited with inventing paper, ink and printing, but it may take yet another invention to get Chinese language effectively onto a computer. The problem lies in trying to type 6,000 Chinese characters on a 47-character keyboard designed for the Roman alphabet. The Chinese input problem has spawned a whole industry devoted to character entry and has forced busy executives to scrawl messages on paper to be typed by someone with special training. The Office XP speech feature, which Microsoft claims can recognize 60,000 words in Mandarin Chinese, also works with Japanese and English.
Characters appear on the screen as the user speaks into a microphone.
Microsoft says the program analyzes context of words and gets them right about 90 percent of the time. Microsoft is promoting the feature as a way to speed computing in simplified Chinese and Japanese, and aid disabled people who have difficulty typing in English. Net at Microsoft, holding up a mobile phone to illustrate his point. This will solve one of the biggest problems they have.'' The Chinese and Japanese versions of Office XP will be available in June. Microsoft is not alone in its attempts to solve the problem of representing Asian-language characters in computers.