Coding Design of Oracle Bone Inscriptions Input Method Based on “ Z hong H ua Z i K u” Database (2023)

Abstract: Abstract : Based on the oracle bone glyph data in the “ZhongHuaZiKu”database, this paper designs a new input method coding scheme which is easy to search in the database, and provides a feasible scheme for the design of oracle bone glyph input method software in the future. The coding scheme in this paper is based on the experience of the past oracle bone inscriptions input method design. In view of the particularity of oracle bone inscriptions, the difference factors such as component combination, sound code and shape code ( letter ) are added, and the coding format is designed as follows : The single component characters in the identified characters are arranged according to the format of " structural code + pronunciation full spelling code + tone code " ; the multi-component characters in the identified characters are arranged according to the format of " structure code + split component pronunciation full spelling code + overall glyph pronunciation full spelling code”; unidentified characters are arranged according to the format of " y + identified component pronunciation full spelling + unidentified component shape code ( letter ) ".Among them, the identified component code and the unidentified component shape code are input in turn according to the specific glyph from left to right, from top to bottom, and from outside to inside. Encoding through these coding formats, the heavy code rate is low, and the input habits of most people are also taken into account. Keywords : oracle bone inscriptions ; input method ; coding

## previous design and inspiration of oracle bone inscriptions input method in the past, some scholars designed the input method of oracle bone inscriptions from the perspective of shape code in coding. for example, mr.xu song of central china normal university developed a method in 1995, which applied 26 english letters and 9 arabic numerals to correspond to more than 500 characters in oracle bone inscriptions, and realized the input of oracle bone inscriptions by keyboard input characters. by 2012, researchers such as li qingsheng of anyang normal university jointly developed an input method of oracle bone inscriptions based on the dynamic description library of oracle bone inscriptions. on the basis of the coding and writing specifications of modern chinese characters, the input side uses the dynamic description method to describe the oracle bone inscriptions with directed strokes and strokes, and combines the extended coding area with the external description character library. it is more effective to solve the input problem of variant characters and unliteracy in oracle bones. some scholars have developed image method, visual input method and handwritten input method from the perspective of non-coding to solve the input problem of oracle bone inscriptions. in 1990, zhou demin et al.of henan university first developed the calculator oracle information processing system ( cjps ), which laid an important foundation for the subsequent research and development of related input methods. in 2004, mr. liu yongge and li qingsheng of anyang normal university developed a visual oracle bone inscriptions input method. the principle of the input method is to provide the input person with a table of oracle bone inscriptions. the input person selects the corresponding radicals contained according to the oracle bone inscriptions that he wants to input. the program presents the results containing these radicals to the input person in the form of candidates. the input person clicks on the glyph he wants to input to complete the input. after that, in 2020, mr.liu yongge, mr.li qiang and others from the key laboratory of oracle bone inscription information processing of anyang normal university jointly developed a new oracle bone script handwriting input method. based on the latest research results of artificial intelligence deep learning and convolutional neural network, the oracle bone script recognition network and recognition module were developed. the method of using this input method is to operate the mouse to write the oracle bone script that you want to input to the virtual handwriting board to complete the recognition of oracle bone script, and then generate the glyph candidate, and then click the candidate glyph to complete the input of oracle bone script. from the above content, there are two main problems in the design of oracle bone inscriptions input method in the past. on the one hand, computer professionals only design the input method of oracle bone inscriptions from the two directions of shape code and non-coding, and do not use phonetic code to participate in coding. the reason is that phonetic code can not encode the unidentified characters in oracle bone inscriptions. 1 whether it is from the perspective of speech or keyboard input, most of us are used to associating phonetic symbols with text . considering that people whose mother tongue is chinese or people whose mother tongue is not chinese, the first thing they learn when learning chinese is the chinese pinyin scheme, we think that setting phonetic codes in the input method coding is very convenient. .from the perspective of ancient chinese characters ， since oracle bone inscriptions are already identified , they must have a clear pronunciation. the commonly used characters in oracle bone inscriptions are basically identified glyphs, it is precisely these identified glyphs that we often use when inputting characters . according to these , we should not abandon the phonetic code when designing input method encoding . on the other hand, the shortcomings of using only shape code to encode are generally not convenient for input learners to learn and use. some are used to input the roots to retrieve alternative characters. this method is similar to the five-stroke input method to split today's regular script characters, but its drawbacks are reflected in the fact that the keyboard is as inconvenient for users to master as the five-stroke input method. it is not in line with the character theory for some 1 although "yin qi wen yuan" data platform ( http://jgw.aynu.edu.cn ) has provided this input method, it does not provide input method software that can be used away from the website, so its coding principle is not clear. oracle bone inscriptions, and it is not convenient to distinguish the large number of variant characters in oracle bone inscriptions. some search for alternative glyphs according to the method of stroke input ( nie yanzhao and liu yongge . 2010.), but most of the modern so-called strokes are applicable to the glyph decomposition of li and kai characters, while many of the more pictorial characters in oracle bone inscriptions cannot be described by the concept of strokes.for example, the relatively representative glyphs of oracle bone inscriptions 2 , 3 , etc., strokes cannot truthfully describe the shape at the top of the glyph ; the 车 characters of oracle bone inscriptions are 4 and 5 . this special glyph of the record segment and the nuances between the glyphs cannot be combined and split simply by strokes. some combine the similar four-corner number retrieval method with the configuration codes such as closed curve stroke and its extension line structure , cross stroke structure , discrete stroke structure, etc(liu yongge and li qiang . 2020.). the "oracle bone inscription six-digit code search font library" is based on these three aspects as the basis for coding, but this search font library does not contain as many glyphs as ours.the most difficult thing for users is to learn this coding rule, which does not meet our requirements in simplicity and efficiency. some use the method of dynamic description, based on the coding and writing norms of modern chinese characters, using concepts and techniques such as directed strokes and pen elements to describe oracle bone inscriptions. @xcite . the premise of this method is that the input must have a deep understanding of oracle bone glyphs, and the writing norms of modern chinese characters are a kind of rules with strong regularity and serious symbolization, which is not very suitable for oracle bone glyphs with strong realism. since oracle bone inscriptions have a high degree of pictography, from the professional point of ancient chinese characters' view, we hope to provide the academia with a coding scheme that ## a new design scheme of oracle bone inscriptions input method 2.1 technical route of oracle bone inscriptions input method design the oracle bone inscriptions input method is designed using microsoft 's text service framework ( tsf : text service framework ). it is a com-based input method framework that does not depend on specific input devices and can support multiple languages. it provides a simple and scalable technology for implementing text input and natural language processing technology. the text service framework includes three main components : application, tsf manager and text service. the architecture is shown in the following figure. picture 1 ：tsf architecture "application" refers to the application software that supports and has adopted tsf, such as microsoft 's ms office, notepad and other word processing programs. the application accesses text by implementing a com server that supports a specific interface, and communicates with tsf by using an interface exposed by the tsf manager. applications that support tsf do not need to consider the specific details of the input method, and can receive text input from the "text service" to achieve a series of operations such as displaying, editing, and storing text. "text service" refers to the text input processor, which can be keyboard input, handwritten recognition input or speech recognition input and other input programs. after registering with tsf, users can use language bar or keyboard shortcuts to interact with the text service. the text service can obtain text from the application or write text to the application. text services can also associate data and attributes with text blocks. the oracle bone inscriptions input method implemented in this paper is a text service that inputs oracle bone inscriptions characters through the keyboard. oracle bone inscriptions input method implements the basic elements of tsf, such as thread manager, client identifiers, document manager, edit context, ranges, compartment, properties and composition. the "thread manager" is responsible for completing the task of connecting the application and the text service. these tasks include activating or suspending the tsf text service, creating the document manager, and maintaining the correct association between the document and the input focus. the "client identifier " is an identifier assigned by the thread manager that is received and must be maintained by clients such as applications and text services. the client needs to provide its own identifier when calling various tsf methods. the continuous text stream created by the "edit context" through the interface can be created by the application and provided to the text service. in some cases, the text service can also create an edit context as needed. the "document manager" is responsible for maintaining the last-in-first-out buffer, and the content stack stores the list of edited content managed by the document manager. an "input combination" is a temporary input state that enables the text service to keep the application and user input text in a state of constant change. the application can obtain the display attribute information of the input combination and use this information to display the input combination state to the user. the application determines how to display the text and what kind of operation to the text according to whether there is an input combination. ## conclusion according to our internal test program, the above coding design is indeed feasible, and the coding repetition rate is very low, which is conducive to accurate search. the number of glyphs involved in the input method coding scheme we designed is unprecedented, so our coding design will be closer to the real situation of oracle bone inscriptions than previous coding designs. we try to provide a coding scheme for the input method in line with the professional cognition of ancient chinese characters. therefore, we are different from the previous design : the coding design is carried out for different types of oracle glyphs, and the concept of "natural classification" is added to the coding of single component characters. for the unidentified glyphs, we also imitate the multicomponent characters as much as possible to carry out the separation in line with the cognition of ancient chinese characters to encode, and use the english letters to refer to the unidentified parts with similar shapes. not only that, we have also implemented the coding form of "shape code + phontic code" that has not been tried in the past. the remaining number of variants that are not often used is not a lot of unidentified glyphs. although some of these are not encoded according to the knowledge of ancient chinese philology, there are still general rules to follow. for example, we use "o" to refer to the closed form component, "x" to refer to the cross part of the two lines, "y" to refer to the trident part, "x" to refer to the unidentified component that cannot be split without increasing the repetition rate, and so on. the design of o, x and y is similar to oracle bone inscriptions six-digit code retrieval font, but we refer to it from the perspective of "component" of ancient chinese characters, not using the concept of "stroke" of subsequent of chinese characters. nevertheless, it still takes a lot of effort to form a regular coding design for the unidentified glyphs. at present, the learning manual matching the input method formed on the basis of this coding design is still in preparation, and the preparation of the learning manual is the subject we will study next. in the following research, we will improve the part of the above coding design that is not convenient for fast input, and try to fit the coding rules with strong regularity as much as possible for the unidentified glyph part.