Subject: pinyin for et

From: ma <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1992 16:36:34 CST

Friends,

ET, a popular Chinese package made in Taiwan, comes with several input methods.
Alas it doesn't come with the pinyin method.  However, it is not too hard
(theoretically) to design a pinyin input table for ET.  We might need a table,
say PINYIN.TAB, similar to PHONETIC.TAB.  Load the table by ETINMD.  Possibly
ETKBM has to be modified too.

Anyway, I would like to know if anybody has done it already?  Or is there
anyone who knows the detail of doing so but don't have time to finish
(and don't care telling me the ideas).  Thanks.

Shan` Wei' Zhang

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From: Ned Walsh <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1992 23:31:28 EST

Hi,

There are two ETEN pinyin files I can think of available (sort of) via
anonymous ftp.

One is a pinyin.box commonly used in E. Asia, "found" by Carlos
McEvilly and now available at ahkcus.org [192.55.187.25] as pinyin.zip
in the src/pc subdirectory.  It includes about 6700 characters and
symbols, roughly half the number covered by ETEN's Big5 character code.

Another is a file called py2big.tab, which Steve Simpson
([email-masked]) made by converting and editing ETEN's
phonetic.tab (basically a bopomofo input file).  When he announced it
last June, it was available for FTP from leibniz.math.psu.edu
[128.118.24.21] in the pub/simpson/chinese subdirectory, but I
couldn't find it there today.  I'm sure it's around somewhere, anyone
know where?  It covers pretty near all (maybe--probably--all) the
regular characters in the Big5 set, but if I recall doesn't include
any of the "special characters" (punctuation, mathematical symbols,
common characters left out of Big5, etc.).  It (or rather
phonetic.tab) also lacked some common alternate pronunciations for a
number of characters.

I don't remember whether py2big.tab was strictly in phrase.box format,
or if it needed editing to be used as a phrase.box.  In any case,
after some fooling around I merged it with a pinyin phrase.box I had
bought elsewhere, which lists characters in frequency order, so the
most common ones appear first.  Today I added some of the special
characters listed in pinyin.zip, plus Japanese kana.  Anyone who wants
it is welcome to it.  It's large though (~127K) so you'll have to
watch out for RAM problems.

/Ned

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From: Ned Walsh <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1992 18:56:20 EST

Hi,

At Yolin Huang's suggestion, I've put my ETEN pinyin phrase.box up for ftp
as nw_pybox.zip in the incoming directory at ahkcus.org [192.55.187.25].
Let me know if you have any problems or find mistakes.

I'm appending nwreadme.txt, included in the zip file.

/Ned
------------------
NW_PYBOX.ZIP contains the following three files:

1.  NWREADME.TXT - This file.

2.  NW_PY2B5.BOX - A pinyin phrase.box for use with the ETEN Chinese
    operating system.  It includes entries for 13,359 Chinese characters,
    Japanese kana, and assorted symbols (punctuation, etc.) covered by
    ETEN's Big5 character set.  To use:

       1.  Start the ETEN operating system
       2.  If you have already loaded a phrase box as an input method,
           type ETINMD/q to clear it from memory.
       3.  Type ETINMD/PH=NW_PYB5.BOX
       4.  To control-shift until characters "PinYin" appear in lower
           left corner of screen.
       5.  Hit control-space to toggle between English and pinyin.

    Punctuation marks and symbols are listed at the start of the file,
    and Japanese kana at the end, to allow for easy additions/deletions.
    Characters with the same pinyin are listed in order of frequency of
    common use (more or less).

    If you run into RAM problems, try adding the following switches
    when starting ETEN:  /L16:1000/B:0/U:0/U16:0
    (e.g. ET16E/L16:1000/B:0/U:0/U16:0 on an EGA system). See ETEN's
    README file for more info on what these switches do.  You may find
    you have to restart ETEN without the switches when you want to print
    a Chinese file.

3.  NW_SKIP.B5 - 508 characters (and their internal hexadecimal codes)
    in ETEN's Big5 character set but left out of NW_PY2B5.BOX.  These
    are basically scientific symbols, two-byte Roman/Greek/Cyrillic
    alphabets, and various graphics characters.

Ned Walsh
[email-masked]
6 January 1992

---

From: Ned Walsh <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1992 23:52:15 EST

Forgot one thing--I used "v" for u-umlaut.  And I used lue4 instead of
the more proper lve4.

/Ned