Input Window Areas

In the Traditional Chinese operating system, application subwindows contain two areas that are used to enter Traditional Chinese characters. A lookup choice window and an auxiliary window are also available in Chinese input mode.

• Preedit area – The text entry area that holds your character formations before you commit them.

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  Note –

  When you commit characters, the characters are put in the text block that is assembled for the application.

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• Status area – The area at the lower left of the application subwindow that displays the current conversion mode and the active keyboard. Later sections in this chapter discuss keyboard switching and using the available conversion modes.

• Lookup choice window – A popup window that displays Hanja or special character lookup choices which are available for the conversion of characters or radicals in the preedit area.

• Auxiliary window – This window contains a palette of icons that provide you the following functions and utilities to simplify text entry and to manage input methods:

  • Input method switching

  • Chinese full-width/half-width character mode switching

  • Chinese/English punctuation mode switching

  • Input method properties setting

  • Input method selection

  • Lookup tables for BIG5, EUC_TW, BIG5 HKSCS, and Unicode characters sets

  • Virtual keyboard

  The input method auxiliary windows support all the UTF-8 locales and the following Traditional Chinese locales:

  • zh_TW/zh_TW.EUC

  • zh_TW.BIG5

  • zh_TW.UTF-8

  • zh_HK.BIG5HK

  • zh_HK.UTF-8

  Two kinds of input methods are supported:

  • Methods based on a code table, such as TsangChieh

  • Methods developed by a vendor, such as NewChuYin or NeiMa