Subject: pinyin input in ETEN

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1991 15:59:26 GMT

Dear Yuan Jiang,
The ETEN ETKBM command allows only to change the keyboard mapping in
conjunction with the BoPoMoFo input method. Specially in Taiwan there
exist quite a few mappings as ET, Dachen, Systex, Lingyi, IBM, MITAC.
As I understand you, you need a PHRASE.BOX for your input method.

The PHRASE.BOX allows you to build up all kind of input methods. The
file PHRASE.BOX is a simple ASCII-file. On the left side there is for
example the pinyin (of a word or a single character), separated by a
blank or a TAB there is the Chinese character(s) you mean. You may have
one such an entry per line. If you have more than one entry with the
same part on the left side, then they will all the corresponding
Chinese characters be displayed, and you can choose the right one by
the number. Fore my owne use I have buildt quite a few PHRASE.BOXes:
- containing the 5000 most used characters in BIG-5 without tone mark
  a xy
  a yx
  an xy
  bang xy

- containing the 13.000 characters of BIG-5 with tone marks (the tone
  marks are just numbers from 0-4 appended to the pinyin). With such a
  big PHRASE.BOX one can no more lode larger software packages as dBASE
  etc. But a small editor (PE2, PE3, DW2 mEMACS) is still ok.
  a1 xy
  a1 yx
  bang4 yx

- Since I hardly know the pronounciation of the 7000 not often used
  Chinese characters I have also a box with Radikal/(remaining)Stroke
  The first 3 digits indicate the Kangxi-radical number the remaining
  two digits the strokes without the strokes of the radikal.
  00900 xy
  14904 xy
  03001 xy

- Finally there is also some words-PHRASE.BOX, where there are the
  most 8000 often words according to words statistics from mainland
  China.
  women xyxy
  tamen yxyx
  zibenzhuyi xyxyxyxy

xy stands for a Chinese character. In the ETEN version smaller than 2.00
it was enough that there existed a file with the name PHRASE.BOX.
Automatically its contents will be loaded into memory.
Beginning from version 2.00 it becomes more comfortable with a separate
command (ETINMD) you indicate the name of the PHRASE.BOX you want to use.
         ETINMD /PH=PHRASE.BOX
Instead of PHRASE.BOX you might have any other name. It is also possible
to combine PHRASE.BOXes. e.g. the standard character PHRASE.BOX with
a PHRASE.BOX containing some specialized vocabulary.
If interested in such existing PHRASE.BOX files please tell me. I'll try
to send you. Actually it's already a long time ago that I wanted to post
these files to the ZHONGWEN anonymous ftp site. But somehow I was not very
successful with the encoding.

Best regards
Urs, Bremen

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From: Kam Mok <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1991 15:16:55 EST

Re: pinyin input in ETEN
Hi Urs,
Yes I think your PHRASE.BOXes will be quite useful to many others,
I also want to see that you post them to some archive so that people can ftp.
Thanks again for sharing them with us.

Kam
[email-masked]

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From: Stephen G Simpson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1991 16:54:24 -0500

Regarding Urs Widmer's recent CCNET posting, concerning ETEN phrase
boxes.

I don't really understand ETEN phrase boxes, but it appears from Urs's
posting that the phrase boxes provide a capability similar to the tit
files in CXTERM.  In other words, the ETEN user can create a phrase
box file which defines a customized keyboard input method.

If this is correct, then it should be possible to use the

       PINYIN+TONE ==> ETEN BIG-5

input method, which already exists for CXTERM, and adapt it to ETEN.
This input method is already known to be completely compatible with
ETEN.  In fact, Yongguang Zhang and I developed this input method by a
phonetic conversion process starting with ETPHON.TAB in ETEN 2.03.
So, probably, all that needs to be done is to convert PY-b5.tit to the
ETEN phrase box file format.

I wish somebody who understands the phrase box format would attempt
this conversion and post the result here on CCNET, or make it
available for anonymous ftp.

If anyone would like to attempt this, the file that you need is
PY-b5.tit, available for anonymous ftp at cs.purdue.edu, directory
/pub/ygz/cxterm-dictionary.

I would also like to encourage Urs Widmer to make his own pinyin
phrase boxes available for anonymous ftp.  Urs, Bitt' sch\"on!

Stephen G. Simpson               [email-masked]
Department of Mathematics        +1 814 863-0775
Pennsylvania State University    home: +1 814 238-2274
University Park, PA 16802

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From: Carlos McEvilly <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1991 06:54:26 EST

I have a .BOX file (PINYIN.BOX) for pinyin input in ETen.  If
someone will kindly tell me how to make it available for ftp, I
will do that.  In the meantime, anyone who wants a copy may
request it from me and I'll send it.  It's a 48K uuencoded .ZIP
file.

Carlos McEvilly  [email-masked]