Subject: Pinyin input for ETEN. BIG-5 versus GB.

From: Stephen G Simpson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1991 15:26:15 -0500

> Thanks a lot to Carlos McEvilly for posting the pinyin.box to a ftp
 > site.  I tried that out and it worked like a charm. Now we can have
 > pinyin method in ETen.  ....  Thanks again for the good work !
 >
 > kam Mok

I was just about to post a similar message, but Kam Mok beat me to it.

For those who don't know, Carlos has made available a very useful
pinyin input method for the ETEN word processor on the IBM PC.  It is
set up for anonymous ftp at ahkcus.org:/pub/src/pc/pinyin.zip.

I think a lot of people have wondered about GB versus BIG-5 character
codes.  BIG-5 is in a sense much better, because it includes about
13000 characters, compared to about 7000 for GB.  Also, since BIG-5 is
keyed to traditional rather than simplified characters, it is more
suitable for classical Chinese literature and for everyday use in the
United States and indeed most parts of the world, except mainland
China.

Until now, I have preferred GB to BIG-5, the main reason being the
lack of pinyin input methods for BIG-5.  Yongguang Zhang and I
partially solved this problem by creating the PY-B5 input method for
cxterm, but there was nothing similar for the IBM PC.  Now, thanks to
Carlos, this problem is completely solved.  From now on I am going to
use BIG-5 exclusively.

Thanks, Carlos!