Installing Chinese Cracter Set

[Guest]

I have English Vista Home Premium installed on my machine, and a Taiwanese
wife who wishes to use the same machine to communicate with her family.

My old XP Laptop had both English and Chinese Traditional character sets
installed and could be switched easily between the two, and had a
english/chinese keyboard, with both the conventional western and the chinese
phonetic "Bo-po-mo-fo" alphabets, the latter necessary for the input of
Chinese characters.

My new PC has only a western keyboard, but my wife has previously seen an
on-screen Bo-po-mo-fo keyboard, operated by the mouse pointer for inputting
chinese characters. She doesn't know, sadly, if this was a windows creation.

Hence I have two questions (remember I am a computer simpleton!):

1) How do I upload/install the Traditional Chinese Characterset?
2) How do I get this on-screen bo-po-mo-fo keyboard (or otherwise input the
characters without a Bo-po-mo-fo keyboard?

Thanks

 

[Andrew McLaren]

1) How do I upload/install the Traditional Chinese Characterset?
2) How do I get this on-screen bo-po-mo-fo keyboard (or otherwise input
the
characters without a Bo-po-mo-fo keyboard?

Hi Earl

This should be pretty easy. In Vista, all major code pages (including
various Chinese codepages) are installed by default, on all editions. To
enable Chinese input, do this:

- log on as the user requiring the feature
- go to Control Panel, Regional and Language Options
- select the keyboards and Languages tab
- the "Text Services and Input Languages" panel will appear.
- in the Keyboards and other input languages box, press the Change Keyboards
button
- press the Language Bar tab and make sure the Language Bar is enabled:
either floating on desktop or docked in taskbar. This will let you change
keyboards.
- press the General tab
- under Installed services, press the Add button
- scroll down the list to Chinese (Taiwan)
- click to expand the keyboard list
- select Phonetic, Chang Jie or Quick, as desired
- click OK

I think in Vista the Bopomofo keyboard is actually called "Phonetic" ...
some weird terminological nicety. Personally I would have called it "Zhuyin
fuhao" - but hey, what do I know? I'm just a foreign devil. Anyway, Phonetic
is the closest I think, to what was labelled Bopomofo in XP.

To enable Zhuyin/Bopomofo input, click on the language bar and choose
Chinese from the list of available languages. The Zhuyin IME input editor
should appear.

It is still up to individual applications to accept Chinese input. The
Chinese keyboard will allow the input of Chinese data from Windows; but the
app you're using still needs to be able to display and transmit this data
correctly.

Other folks might have additional info for you (doubtless others are far
more experienced with Chinese input methods!) but, I hope this helps a bit.

 

[Guest]

just want to say I found Andrew's information very useful. I have followed
and have successfully activated traditional Chinese input language bar.
Thanks!