Your favourite input method on a PDA

Life Technology
1

I am not sure whether to put this on the Tech forum or in ‘Learrning Chinese’…

Those of you who are thinking to buy a PDA to learn Chinese may have the same question.

I will be inputing HanYu PinYin into the PDA (or romanji kana for Japanese) and wanted to know whether people prefer:
a) handwriting recognition
b) a mini-QWERTY keyboard that some PDAs use…

Please note that this question is not about using a PDA to input the chinese charaters themselves, just the most-efficient manner to input PinYin…

2

[quote=“meatball head”]I am not sure whether to put this on the Tech forum or in ‘Learrning Chinese’…

Those of you who are thinking to buy a PDA to learn Chinese may have the same question.

I will be inputing HanYu Pinyin into the PDA (or romanji kana for Japanese) and wanted to know whether people prefer:
a) handwriting recognition
b) a mini-QWERTY keyboard that some PDAs use…

Please note that this question is not about using a PDA to input the Chinese charaters themselves, just the most-efficient manner to input Pinyin…[/quote]I used to use the Palm “Graffiti” input method. It’s similar to handwriting recognition. It’s alright.

Now I use the little qwerty keyboard on my Treo 600. It’s much better. Quicker and easier to use.

3

I use Palm’s original Graffitti (not Graffitti 2). Got too used to it and find my speed decrease with the new system. Plus my PDA doesn’t have a fancy keyboard…

4

Thanks guys, it sounds like the mini-QWERTY keyboards may be the answer. However I did read in a few reviews that the mini-keyboards were often slow/sluggish to use.

how does the handwriting regcognition work for PinYin input? If you want to input 中, do you type, z+h+o+n+g+1 ???

That sounds very hard and very slow work…!!

5

Think of it as reinforcement of tone knowledge… :wink:

I usually use QWERTY for my own input, but handwriting recognition to look up things in a dictionary equipped with that. (If that makes sense.)

6

[quote=“meatball head”]Thanks guys, it sounds like the mini-QWERTY keyboards may be the answer. However I did read in a few reviews that the mini-keyboards were often slow/sluggish to use.[/quote]Do you mean sluggish from a hardware or a software point of view? Hardware meaning it’s awkward to press the keys; software meaning it takes a while before the character you selected shows up.

The keyboard on the Treo 600 is fine on both counts, and I’ve heard that the one on the Treo 650 is even better.

I don’t see why the mini-keyboards on Pocket PC PDAs would be any different, at least from the hardware point of view.