how to use touchpad to enter chinese characters?

[rockhammer]

Hi Folks,

I am using vista home premium on a laptop with a touchpad. I am trying to
find a way to use the touchpad to enter chinese characters (or any language
in fact) via the handwriting recognition feature described in
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/v...sta.mspx#EDLAC.

If anyone can tell me how to set this up, I would much appreciate. I have
essentially zero knowledge in all this - in fact I don't even know how to use
the keyboard to enter chinese - so if you can describe from scratch, that
would be great. Thanks a lot.

[Synapse Syndrome]

Look here:
http://www.declan-software.com/chinese_ime/

And there is even a YouTube video I found on Google:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fNeN...eature=related

[rockhammer]

First of all, I got an email notification that someone replied to this post.
But I don't see any replies here so, if someone did in fact reply, I would
much appreciate if you could repost.

Since I posted the question, I found out how to use the mouse to write
chinese via the Tablet PC Input Panel from these webpages:

http://www.tipandtrick.net/2008/enab...windows-vista/
http://www.tipandtrick.net/2008/how-...windows-vista/

By replicating the mouse movements & clicks on the touchpad, I can also use
the touchpad to write chinese. However, the shortcoming of going this route
is that:

a) the hand movements required to use the mouse to write what you normally
use a pen to write feels very unnatural and will certainly hurt your wrist
after about a dozen or so chinese characters; and
b) the hand movements required to use the touchpad suffers from the same
problem as for the mouse but has the additional problem that, between
strokes, you need to first reposition the mouse pointer to the proper
location first before continuing to the next stroke - you do indeed need to
do the same when using the mouse but that movement is very natural to normal
mouse usage whereas it is very unnatural for touchpad usage (to me anyway)

The effect of issue (b) is that if I were to use the touchpad like you would
use a writing pad peripheral or an actual tablet pc, all your strokes would
become connected with the resultant line looking like tracing a path through
a maze. In order to avoid that, the mouse pointer needs to be repositioned
to the desired location between strokes.

So the last piece of my puzzle is thus this: how can I configure the
touchpad such that when I use it as a Tablet PC Input Panel to enter chinese
(or other handwriting) it will behave like a writing pad peripheral while
behaving like a regular touchpad in other/normal situations?

If anyone has any pointers for that, I would much appreciate it. Thanks.

[Marcel_H]

Hi rockhammer!
I am using Vista Ultimate and Word 2000.
I have installed the IME for Simplified Chinese, and that works well.
However, the Ruby (pinyin) text feature (in Format ->Asian Layout ->Phonetic
guide) doesn't work
The MS Knowledge base has a patch for Traditional Chars, but not Simplified.
It is in support.microsoft.com/kb/939398
Do you (or does anyone) know how to get Ruby to work with Simplified Chars
in Vista? Or how to edit the patch in kb?

[Synapse Syndrome]

(My original reply seems to have been deleted on the Microsoft server, by
the idiotic censor)

Look here:
http://www.declan-software.com/chinese_ime/

And there is even a YouTube video I found on Google:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fNeN...eature=related

ss.

[rockhammer]

Sorry, I hadn't had time to look at this in detail until now.

Hi Nonny, thanks for the link to the google discussions.

Hi SS, thanks for the links to the instructions & the youtube video. I got
to the point where I can use the IME pad as demo-ed in the video. But I am
hung up on the following still:

1) the video showed that the IME pad had the option of "Hand Writing (CH)"
by CH I guess is meant Chinese. I did manage to find Hand Writing (KO) for
Korean and Hand Writing (JA) for Japanese, but no (CH). How can I
find/install that?

2) the IME pad essentially gives the user the same input methods as the
Tablet PC Input Panel (as outlined in the www.tipsandtricks.net links).
However my central question remains which is that both the IME pad and the
Tablet PC Input Panel, while they work, are unnatural. By that I mean,
writing with the mouse is difficult when you are used to holding a pen. Using
the touchpad is much more natural but the need to hold the left button down
PLUS having to reposition the cursor between strokes make the touchpad even
more unnatural. The ideal would be that I can use the touchpad: a) without
holding the left mouse button down; b) without having to reposition the
cursor between strokes during the writing of a single character; and c) use
one of the two mouse buttons to signal/move the cursor to start writing the
next character.

I read something that sounded very promising here
http://yedda.com/questions/Writing_t...1499138160555/
that pointed me to here http://www.synaptics.com/support/utili.cfm. Alas,
that executible does not seem to want to run in Vista!! The beauty of Vista!!
Sigh.

So if any one of you can move me further towards the ideal as noted above
that would be much appreciated. Thanks a lot.

[rockhammer]

Hi Marcel, sorry, I'm afraid I am familiar with what you are doing there and
so I don't have anything to offer.

[Synapse Syndrome]

If you would like to use this a lot, I would recommend you get a Wacom
tablet. They have come down in price a lot since I got my Intuos, and now
they have... wait, they do not seem to make the Graphire or the other one
any more. Maybe the new Bamboo will be your thing..
http://www.wacom-europe.com/index2.asp?lang=en&pid=3

ss.