How to Type-In Chinese Characters?

My Operating System is Windows XP.

I use an old Toshiba laptop, with a German keyboard.

Back in my home country, my operating system is Linux (SUSE 7.1) , and the keyboard has no ‘German characters’.

Thank you, :)!

You didn’t specify whether you have English, German, or Chinese XP on your laptop.

English XP, thank you - and sorry for the confusion, :)!

Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options -> Langauges tab -> Details… -> Add

Add Chinese - Taiwan, and use the Microsoft New Phonetic IME 2002a, which is Hanyu Pinyin input.

You may have to have your Windows XP installation disk handy.

Any Chinese /Mandarin/ Traditional Chinese / Chinese Taiwan doesn’t exist.

So I inserted the installation CD, but the copying always failed.

From my PC, they asked files from D:/i386 or sth like that.

Should I changeit to just D:/ ?

Thx, :)!

When it asks you for the files on D:\i386, try browsing to that directory on the CD-ROM.

there is no such directory there.

zhen me ban?

Maybe it’s (CD Drive letter):\Windows\i386 or something similar.

Nope, checked them out the first time around.

Any suggestions, anyone?

Thank you, :)!

Hi,

I’m in the same boat, and I don’t have the CD, so any advice there?

Thanks.

Well, without the Windows option, I’d recommend something like NJStar Communicator.

microsoft.com/windows/ie/dow … fault.mspx

doesn’t 100% work for me, maybe not enough memory.

I have an American keyboard. How can I tell what zhuyin corresponds to each key on the board?

Find an image online and print it out? Use the on-screen keyboard that’s part of the MS input method?

Aw, I didn’t even know there was an on-screen keyboard.

Shit, I can’t find the keyboard thing. I’m sure it’s there somewhere. At least it used to be… Maybe it’s gone now? That would suck.

[quote=“New2Commuting”]Any Chinese /Mandarin/ Traditional Chinese / Chinese Taiwan doesn’t exist.

So I inserted the installation CD, but the copying always failed.

From my PC, they asked files from D:/i386 or sth like that.

Should I changeit to just D:/ ?

Thx, :slight_smile:![/quote]

you should be able to find it by browsing the cd. I had to install chinese on my friend’s laptop too and we just browsed around the cd and found it. I can’t remember what folder though, so it may take a while.
another option is to google it and see if its available for download. just be wary of the source, you don’t wanna dl a virus or anything.

Also, can’t you buy clear stickers to put on your keyboard so you have Zhu Ying Fu Hao (Bo Po Mo Fo)? A friend bought some and stuck it on his Vaio and it looks good.

From my point of view, I think the “Boshlamy Trial” is a better way to type in Chinese.

Using this method, you do not need to care about where your keyboard was made, because you can type in English.

However, if there is something important that you need to understand more clearly in Chinese, you could try this website.

Okay, I’m sorry to bump this thread up but is there a way to type TRADITIONAL Chinese using pinyin rather then zhuyin? Unfortunately I have forgotten the zhuyin I learned as a little kid and I’m currentily learning pinyin in college so it’s more convinient for me to use pinyin. I know you can type SIMPLIFIED chinese using Pinyin but that’s not what I’m looking for.

This might be overkill for you, but I use Wenlin for all my Chinese input:http://www.wenlin.com/
It’s not cheap at US$249 (there is a free demo on the webpage), but it’s been worth every dollar and then some to me over the years. Positively brilliant software (works on PC and Mac). You type pinyin and can change between traditional and simplified characters on the fly (or combo traditional, simplified, and English all in the same document).

For students, it’s a fantastic resource - mouse over a character and the pinyin, English meaning, and common word combinations appear in a pane at the bottom (and you can click characters to cross reference, find words the character is used in, see animated brushstrokes, isolate radicals, etc.). It also includes a 10,000 character dictionary (200,000 words), customizable flashcards that you can self-score, handwriting recognition, support for Unicode, GB, Big5, UTF-8 and HZ, and a whole host of other things I’m probably forgetting. Hell, I routinely copy and paste stuff into Wenlin to assist in reading Chinese.