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Lycurgus/Cangjie
Coding of "倉頡輸入法" (i.e. Cangjie method) in traditional Chinese characters
Traditional Chinese倉頡輸入法
Simplified Chinese仓颉输入法
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinCāngjié Shūrùfǎ
Gwoyeu RomatzyhTsang Jye Shuruhfaa
Wade–GilesTs'ang1-chieh2 Shu1-ju4-fa3
IPA[tsʰáŋtɕjě ʂúɻûfà]
Yue: Cantonese
Yale RomanizationChōng Kit Syūyahpfaat
JyutpingCong1 Kit3 Syu1 Jap6 Faat3
Southern Min
Hokkien POJChhong-kiat Su-ji̍p-hoat

The Cangjie input method (Tsang-chieh input method, sometimes also Changjie, Cang Jie or ChongKit) is a system by which Chinese characters may be entered into a computer using a standard keyboard. Invented in 1976 by Chu Bong-Foo, the method is named after Cangjie (Tsang-chieh), the mythological inventor of the Chinese writing system; the name was suggested by Chiang Wei-kuo, then Defence Minister of Taiwan. Although the input method was initially based upon traditional Chinese characters, it has since been revamped so that Cangjie and the simplified Chinese character set can interact.

In filenames and elsewhere, the name Cangjie is sometimes abbreviated as cj.

Unlike pinyin, Cangjie is based on the graphological aspect of the characters: each basic, graphical unit is represented by a basic character component, 24 in all, each mapped to a particular letter key on a standard QWERTY keyboard. An additional, "difficult character" function is mapped to the X key. Within the keystroke-to-character representations, there are four subsections of characters: the Philosophical Set (corresponding to the letters 'A' to 'G' and representing the sun, the moon and the five elements), the Strokes Set (corresponding to the letters 'H' to 'N' and representing the brief and subtle strokes), the Body-Related Set (corresponding to the letters 'O' to 'R' and representing various parts of human anatomy), and the Shapes Set (corresponding to the letters 'S' to 'Y' and representing complex and encompassing character forms).

The basic character components in Cangjie are usually called "radicals"; nevertheless, Cangjie decomposition is not based on traditional Kangxi radicals, nor is it based on standard stroke order; it is in fact a simple geometric decomposition.

Overview of the input method

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The keys and "radicals"

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The basic character components in Cangjie are called "radicals" (字根) or "letters" (字母). There are 24 radicals but 26 keys; the 24 radicals (the basic shapes 基本字形) are associated with roughly 76 auxiliary shapes (輔助字形), which in many cases are either rotated or transposed versions of components of the basic shapes. For instance, the letter A (日) can represent either itself, the slightly wider 曰, or a 90° rotation of itself. (For a more complete account of the 76-odd transpositions and rotations than the one listed below, see the article on Cangjie entry in Chinese Wikibooks.)

Group Key Name Pinyin Primary meaning
Philosophical group A 日 sun ri4 日, 曰, 90° rotated 日 (as in 巴)
B 月 moon yue4/5 the top four strokes of 目, 冂, 爫, 冖, the top and top-left part of 炙, 然, and 祭, the top-left four strokes of 豹 and 貓, and the top four strokes of 骨
C 金 gold jin1 itself, 丷, 八, and the penultimate two strokes of 四 and 匹
D 木 wood mu4 itself, the first two strokes of 寸 and 才, the first two strokes of 也 and 皮
E 水 water shui3 氵, the last five strokes of 暴 and 康, 又
F 火 fire hou3 the shape 小, 灬, the first three strokes in 當 and 光
G 土 earth tu3
Stroke group H 竹 bamboo zhu2 The slant and short slant, the Kangxi radical 竹, namely the first four strokes in 笨 and 節
I 戈 weapon ron2 The dot, the first three strokes in 床 and 庫, and the shape 厶
J 十 ten shi2 The cross shape and the shape 宀
K 大 big da4/dai4 The X shape, including 乂 and the first two strokes of 右, as well as 疒
L 中 centre zhong1/zhong4 The vertical stroke, as well as 衤 and the first four strokes of 書 and 盡
M 一 one yi1 The horizontal stroke, as well as the final stroke of 孑 and 刁, the shape 厂, and the shape 工
N 弓 bow gong1 The crossbow and the hook
Body parts group O 人 person ren2 The dismemberment, the Kangxi radical 人, the first two strokes of 丘 and 乓, the first two strokes of 知, 攻, and 氣, and the final two strokes of 兆
P 心 heart xin1 The Kangxi radical 忄, the second stroke in 心, the last four strokes in 恭, 慕, and 忝, the shape 匕, the shape 七, the penultimate two strokes in 代, and the shape 勹
Q 手 hand shou3 The Kangxi radical 手
R 口 mouth kou3 The Kangxi radical 口
Character shapes group S 尸 corpse shi1 匚, the first two strokes of 己, the first stroke of 司 and 刀, the third stroke of 成 and 豕, the first four strokes of 長 and 髟
T 廿 twenty nian4 Two vertical strokes connected by a horizontal stroke; the Kangxi radical 艸 when written as 艹 (whether the horizontal stroke is connected or broken)
U 山 mountain shan1 Three-sided enclosure with an opening on the top
V 女 woman nu3 A hook to the right, a V shape, the last three strokes in 艮, 衣, and 長
W 田 field tian2 Itself, as well as any four-sided enclosure with something inside it, including the first two strokes in 母 and 毋
Y 卜 fortune telling bu4 The 卜 shape and rotated forms, the shape 辶, the first two strokes in 斗
Collision/Difficult key* X 重/難 collision/difficult (1) disambiguation of Cangjie code decomposition collisions, (2) code for a "difficult-to-decompose" part
Special character key* Z (See note) Auxiliary code used for entering special characters (no meaning on its own). In most cases, this key combined with other keys will produce Chinese punctuations (such as 。,、,「 」,『 』).

Note: Some variants use Z as a collision key instead of X. In those systems, Z has the name "collision" (重) and X has the name "difficult" (難); but the use of Z as a collision key is neither in the original Cangjie nor used in the current mainstream implementations. In other variants, Z may have the name "user-defined" (造) or some other name.

The auxiliary shapes of each Cangjie radical have changed slightly between different versions of the Cangjie method; this is one reason that different versions of the Cangjie method are not completely compatible.

Keyboard layout

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A typical keyboard layout for Cangjie method, based on United States keyboard layout. Note the non-standard use of Z as the collision key.

The basic rules

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The typist must be familiar with several decomposition rules 拆字規則 that define how to analyse a character to arrive at a Cangjie code.

  • Direction of decomposition: left to right, top to bottom, and outside to inside
  • Geometrically connected forms: take 4 Cangjie codes, namely the first, second, third, and last codes
  • Geometrically unconnected forms that can be broken into two subforms (i.e., 你): identify the two geometrically connected subforms according to the direction of decomposition rules (i.e., 人 and 尔), then take the first and last codes of the first subform and the first, second, and last code of the second subform.
  • Geometrically unconnected forms that can be broken into multiple subforms (i.e., 謝): identify the first geometrically connected subform according to the direction of decomposition rules (i.e., 言) and take the first and last codes of that form. Next, break the remainder (i.e., 射) into subforms (i.e., 身 and 寸) and take the first and last codes of the first subform and the last code of the last subform.

The rules are subject to various principles:

  • Conciseness (精簡) — if two decompositions are possible, the shorter decomposition is correct
  • Completeness (完整) — if two decompositions of the same length are possible, the one that identifies a more complex form first is the correct decomposition
  • Reflection of the form of the radical (字型特徵) — the decomposition should reflect the shape of the radical, meaning (a) using the same code twice or more should be avoided if possible, and (b) the shape of the character should not be "cut" at a corner in the form
  • Omission of codes (省略)
    • Partial omission (部分省略) — when the number of codes in a complete decomposition would exceed the permitted number of codes, the extra codes are ignored
    • Omission in enclosed forms (包含省略) — when part of the character to be decomposed and the form is an enclosed form, only the shape of the enclosure is decomposed; the enclosed forms are omitted

Examples

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Typing Chinese with Cangjie input method version 5
  • 車 (chē, vehicle)
    • This character is geometrically connected, consisting of one part with a vertical structure, so we take the first, second, and last Cangjie codes from top to bottom.
    • The Cangjie code is thus 十 田 十 (JWJ), corresponding to the basic shapes of the codes in this example.
  • 謝 (xiè; to thank, to wither)
    • This character consists of geometrically unconnected parts arranged horizontally. For the initial decomposition, we treat it as two parts, 言 and 射.
    • The first part, 言, is geometrically unconnected from top to bottom; we take the first (亠, auxiliary shape of 卜 Y) and last parts (口, basic shape of 口 R) and arrive at 卜 口 (YR).
    • The second part is again geometrically unconnected, arranged horizontally. The two parts are 身 and 寸.
      • For the first part of this second part, 身, we take the first and last codes. Both are slants and therefore H; the first and last codes are thus 竹 竹 (HH).
      • For the second part of the original second part, 寸, we take only the last part. Because this is geometrically unconnected and consists of two parts, the first part is the outer form while the second part is the dot in the middle. The dot is I, and therefore the last code is 戈 (I).
    • The Cangjie code is thus 卜 口 (YR) 竹 竹 (HH) 戈 (I), or 卜 口 竹 竹 戈 (YRHHI).
  • 谢 (simplified version of 謝)
    • This example is identical to the above, except that the first part is 讠; the first and last codes are 戈 (I) and 女 (V)
    • Repeating the same steps as in the above example, we get 戈 女 (IV) 竹 竹 (HH) 戈 (I), or 戈 女 竹 竹 戈 (IVHHI).

The short list of exceptions

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Some forms are always decomposed in the same way, whether the rules say they should be decomposed this way or not. The number of such exceptions is small:

Form Fixed decomposition
Version 2 Version 3 Version 5
門 (door) 日 弓 (AN)
目 (eye) 月 山 (BU)
鬼 (ghost) 竹 戈 (HI) 竹 戈 (HI) or HUI —
几 (small table) 竹 山 (HU) 竹 弓 (HN)
贏 (win) — 卜 口 月 月 弓 (YRBBN) 卜 弓 月 山 金 (YNBUC)
虍 (tiger [radical]) 卜 心 (YP)
亡 on top of 口 (吂) 卜 口 (YR) 卜 女 口 (YVR)
隹 (fowl) 人 土 (OG)
气 (air [radical]) 人 山 (OU) 人 弓 (ON) 人 一 弓 (OMN)
畿 minus the 田 女 戈 (VI)
鬥 (compete) 中 弓 (LN)
阝 (mound or city radical) 弓 中 (NL)

Some forms cannot be decomposed. They are represented by an X. (Which appears as the 難 key on a Cangjie keyboard.)[1]

Form Fixed decomposition (v5)
臼 ＨＸ
與 ＨＸＹＣ
興 ＨＸＢＣ
盥 ＨＸＢＴ　
姊 ＶＬＸＨ
齊 ＹＸ
兼 ＴＸＣ
鹿 ＩＸＰ
身 ＨＸＨ
卍 ＮＸ
黽 ＲＸＵ
龜 ＮＸＵ
廌 ＩＸＦ
慶 ＩＸＥ　
淵 ＥＬＸＬ
肅 ＬＸ

Early Cangjie system

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In the beginning, the Cangjie input method was not a way to produce a character in any character set. It was, instead, an integrated system consisting of the Cangjie input rules and a Cangjie controller board. The controller board contains character generator firmware, which dynamically generates Chinese characters from Cangjie codes when characters are output, using the hi-res graphics mode of an Apple II computer. In the preface of the Cangjie user's manual, Chu Bong-Foo wrote in 1982:

[in translation]
In terms of output: The output and input, in fact, [form] an integrated whole; there is no reason that [they should be] dogmatically separated into two different facilities.… This is in fact necessary.…

In this early system, when the user types "yk " (for example) to get the Chinese character 文, the Cangjie codes do not get converted to any character encoding; the actual string "yk " is stored. In a very real sense, the Cangjie code of each character (string of 1 to 5 lowercase letters plus a space) was the encoding of that particular character.

Demonstration of character generator Mingzhu's capability to generate characters according to the codes. None of the examples are included in Unicode. The first character is ⿰飠它, which is for a kind of soup in Xuzhou. Other characters are never recorded.

A particular "feature" of this early system is that if you send random lowercase words to the character generator, it will attempt to construct Chinese characters according to the Cangjie decomposition rules, sometimes causing strange, unknown characters to appear. This unusual feature, "automatic generation of characters", is actually described in the manual and is responsible for producing more than 10,000 of the about 15,000 characters that the system can handle. The name Cangjie, evocative of creation of new characters, was actually very apt for this early version of Cangjie.

The presence of the integrated character generator also explains the historical necessity for the existence of the "X" key used for disambiguation of decomposition collisions: because characters are "chosen" when the codes are output, every character that can be displayed must in fact have a unique Cangjie decomposition. It would not make sense—nor would it be practical—for the system to provide a choice of candidate characters when some random text file is displayed; the user would not know which of the candidates are correct.

Issues

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Cangjie was designed to be an easy-to-use system to help promote the use of Chinese computing; nevertheless, many users find Cangjie to be a difficult method. Many of the perceived difficulties arise from poor instruction.[verification needed]

Perceived difficulties

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  • In order to input using Cangjie, one must know not only the names of the radicals, but also all their auxiliary shapes (which might not appear to make sense, though Chu had intended all the auxiliary shapes to be related to the basic shapes and "easy to remember"). It is common to find tables of the Cangjie radicals with their auxiliary shapes taped onto the monitors of casual computer users.
  • One must also be familiar with the decomposition rules; a lot of casual computer users are not even aware of the existence of decomposition rules but rather type by guessing. This makes Cangjie difficult for them.

Enough practice, however, can overcome the above problems. A typist with sufficient practice in Cangjie touch-types, much like one typing English. It is entirely possible for a touch-typist to type at 25 Chinese characters per minute (cpm) or better in Cangjie, yet have difficulty remembering the list of auxiliary shapes or even the decomposition rules. Experienced Cangjie typists can reportedly attain a typing speed between 60 cpm and over 200 cpm.

Actual difficulties

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Cangjie, however, also has some fundamental problems:

  • Cangjie is not error forgiving (不容錯): The decomposition of a character depends on a predefined set of "standard shapes" (標準字形); however, because Cangjie is used in many different countries, the standard shape of a certain character in Cangjie is not always the standard shape the user has learnt for that character. Learning Cangjie then entails learning not only Cangjie itself, but also unfamiliar standard shapes for some characters. The Cangjie IME does not handle mistakes in decomposition except by telling the user (usually by beeping) that there is a mistake.
  • Punctuation marks are not geometrically decomposed, but rather given random-looking codes that begin with ZX followed by a string of three letters related to the ordering of the characters in the Big5 code. Typing punctuation marks in Cangjie thus becomes a frustrating exercise in either memorization or pick-and-peck. However, this is solved on modern system through accessing a virtual keyboard on screen (On Windows, this is activated by pressing Ctrl + Alt + comma key)
  • The user cannot type a character which he or she has forgotten how to write. This, of course, is not a specific problem with Cangjie but rather a problem universal to all non-phonetic input methods.

In some situations it cannot be used at all. Cangjie uses all 26 keys in an QWERTY keyboard; it cannot be used to input Chinese on cell phones ("dumb phones"). For cell phones, zhuyin, 5-stroke (or 9-stroke by Motorola) and the Q9 input method are the current norm because they are designed specifically for use on numeric keypads. Of course, smartphones can and do support Cangjie input by using the touchscreen virtual keyboard.

Versions of Cangjie

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The Cangjie input method is commonly said to have gone through five generations (commonly referred to as “versions” in English), each of which is slightly incompatible with the others. Currently, version 3 (第三代倉頡) is the most common; it is the version of Cangjie supported natively by Microsoft Windows. Version 5 (第五代倉頡), supported by the Free Cangjie IME and previously the only Cangjie supported by SCIM, represents a significant minority method and supported by iOS.

The early Cangjie system supported by the Zero One card on the Apple II was Version 2; Version 1 was never released.

The Cangjie input method supported on the Mac OS is somewhat like Version 3 and somewhat like Version 5.

Version 5, like the original Cangjie input method, was created directly by Chu, the inventor. Chu had hoped that the release of Version 5, originally slated to be Version 6, would bring an end to the “more than ten versions of Cangjie input method” (slightly incompatible versions created by different vendors).

Version 6 was developed by Chu's longtime assistant Shen Honglian (沈紅蓮). It was created as the encoding for a character set of about 100,000 characters extracted from Chinese literature. This character set was developed independently from Unicode, which Chu heavily criticized as inferior in design.[citation needed] Version 6 has not yet been released to the public, but is being used to create a database which can accurately store every historical Chinese text.

Variants of Cangjie

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Most modern implementations of Cangjie IMEs provide various convenient features:

  • Some IMEs list all characters beginning with the code you have typed; for example, if you type A, the system gives you all characters whose Cangjie code begins with A so that you can select the correct character if it is on the screen; if you type another A, the list is shortened to give all characters whose code begins with AA. Examples of such implementations include the IME in Mac OS X, and SCIM.
  • Some IMEs provide one or more wildcard keys, usually but not always * and/or ?, that allows the user to omit part(s) of the Cangjie code; the system will display a list of matching characters for the user to choose. Examples include xcin, SCIM, and the IME in the Founder (University of Peking) typesetting systems. Microsoft Windows's "standard" Changjie IME allows * to substitute for in-between characters (effectively reducing it to Simplified Cangjie entries), while New Changjie IME allows * as a wildcard anywhere except for the first character.
  • Some IMEs provide an "abbreviation" feature, where impossible Cangjie codes are interpreted as abbreviations for the Cangjie codes of more than one character. This allows more characters to be input with fewer keys. An example is SCIM.
  • Some IMEs provide an "association" (聯想 lianxiang) feature, where the system anticipates what you are going to type next, and provides you with a list of characters or even phrases associated with what the user has typed. An example is the Microsoft Changjie IME.
  • Some IMEs present the list of candidate characters differently depending on the frequency of character use (how often that character has been typed by the user). An example is the Cangjie IME in NJStar.

Besides the wildcard key, many of these features are very convenient for casual users but unsuitable for touch-typists because they make the Cangjie IME unpredictable.

There have also been various attempts to "simplify" Cangjie one way or another:

  • Simplified Cangjie ( also known as Quick, (簡易 jiǎnyì) or (速成 sùchéng) ) has the same radicals, auxiliary shapes, decomposition rules, and short list of exceptions as Cangjie, but only the first and last codes are used if more than two codes are required in Cangjie.

Applications

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Many researchers have discussed ways to decompose Chinese characters into their major components, and have tried to build applications based on the decomposition system. The idea can be referred to as the study of The Genes of Chinese Characters.[2] Cangjie codes certainly offer a basis for such an endeavour. Academia Sinica in Taiwan [3] and Jiaotong University in Shanghai [4] have similar projects as well.

One direct application of the use of decomposed characters is the possibility of computing the similarities in writing Chinese characters, e.g.[5] the Cangjie input method offers a good starting point for this kind of application. By relaxing the limit of five codes for each Chinese character and adopting more detailed Cangjie codes for each character, we can compute visually similar characters. Integrating this with pronunciation information enables computer-assisted learning of Chinese characters.[6]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ http://www.chinesecj.com/newlearncj/cj5/cj5.php
  2. ^ http://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hant/漢字基因 漢字基因
  3. ^ http://cdp.sinica.edu.tw/cdphanzi/ 漢字構形資料庫
  4. ^ 上海交通大學漢字編碼組,上海漢語拼音文字研究組編著。漢字信息字典。北京市科學出版社，1988。
  5. ^ 宋柔，林民，葛詩利。漢字字形計算及其在校對系統中的應用，小型微型計算機系統，第29卷第10期，第1964至1968頁，2008。
  6. ^ http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1967293.1967297 Chao-Lin Liu, Min-Hua Lai, Kan-Wen Tien, Yi-Hsuan Chuang, Shih-Hung Wu, and Chia-Ying Lee. Visually and phonologically similar characters in incorrect Chinese words: Analyses, identification, and applications, ;;ACM Transactions on Asian Language Information Processing, 10(2), 10:1-39. Association for Computing Machinery, USA, 2011.
  • Taipei: Chwa! Taiwan Inc. (全華科技圖書公司). 倉頡中文資訊碼 : 倉頡字母、部首、注音三用檢字對照 [The Cangjie Chinese information code : with indexes keyed by Cangjie radicals, Kangxi radicals, and zhuyin]. Publication number 023479. — This is the user manual of an early Cangjie system with a Cangjie controller card.
    • The second-to-last paragraph on the first page in the section entitled "The Cangjie radical-based Chinese input method" (倉頡字母中文輸入法) states that

      [Translation]
      This is no problem; there are also auxiliary forms to complement the deficiencies of the radicals. The auxiliary forms are variations of the shape of the radicals, [and therefore] easy to remember.

    • The last paragraph on the fifth page in the same section states

      [Translation]
      The dictionary appended [to this book] is based on the 4800 standard, commonly used characters as proclaimed by the Ministry of Education. Adding to this the characters that are automatically generated, the number of characters is about 15,000 (using the Kangxi dictionary as a basis).

  • Part of the information from this article comes from the equivalent Chinese-language Wikipedia article
  • The decomposition rules come from the "Friend of Cangjie — Malaysia" web site at http://www.chinesecj.com/ The site also gives the typing speed of experienced typists and provides software for version 5 of the Cangjie method for Microsoft Windows.
  • It might be difficult to find specific references to the "not error-forgiving" property of Cangjie. The table at http://www.array.com.tw/keytool/compete.htm is one external reference that states this fact.
  • Input.foruto.com has a brief history of the Cangjie input method as seen by that article‘s author. Versions 1 and 2 are clearly identified in the article.
  • Cbflabs.com contains a number of articles written by Mr Chu Bong-Foo, with references not only to the Cangjie input method, but also Chinese language computing in general. Versions 5 and 6 (now referred to as 5) of the Cangjie input method are clearly identified.
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Category:CJK input methods Category:Articles containing video clips

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