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Cangjie input method
Coding of "Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text倉頡輸入法" (i.e. Cangjie method) in traditional Chinese characters
Traditional Chinese	倉頡輸入法Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text
Simplified Chinese	仓颉输入法Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Cāngjié Shūrùfǎ Gwoyeu Romatzyh Tsang Jye Shuruhfaa Wade–Giles Ts'ang1-chieh2 Shu1-ju4-fa3 IPA [tsʰáŋtɕjě ʂúɻûfà] Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Chōngkit Syūyahpfaat Jyutping Cong1kit3 Syu1jap6faat3 Southern Min Hokkien POJ Chhong-kiat Su-ji̍p-hoat Eastern Min Fuzhou BUC Chŏng-kĭk Sṳ̆-ĭk-huák

The Cangjie input method (Tsang-chieh input method, sometimes called Changjie, Cang Jie, Changjei^[1] or Chongkit) is a system for entering Chinese characters into a computer using a standard computer keyboard. In filenames and elsewhere, the name Cangjie is sometimes abbreviated as cj.

The input method was invented in 1976 by Chu Bong-Foo, and named after Cangjie (Tsang-chieh), the mythological inventor of the Chinese writing system, at the suggestion of Chiang Wei-kuo, the former Defense Minister of Taiwan. Chu Bong-Foo released the patent for Cangjie in 1982, as he thought that the method should belong to Chinese cultural heritage.^[2] Therefore, Cangjie has become open-source software and is on every computer system that supports traditional Chinese characters, and it has been extended so that Cangjie is compatible with the simplified Chinese character set.

Cangjie is the first Chinese input method to use the QWERTY keyboard. Chu saw that the QWERTY keyboard had become an international standard, and therefore believed that Chinese-language input had to be based on it.^[3] Other, earlier methods use large keyboards with 40 to 2400 keys, except the Four-Corner Method, which uses only number keys.

Unlike the Pinyin input method, Cangjie is based on the graphological aspect of the characters: each graphical unit, called a "radical" (not to be confused with Kangxi radicals), is re-parented by a basic character component, 24 in total, each mapped to a particular letter key on a standard QWERTY keyboard. An additional "difficult character" function is mapped to the X key. Keys are categorized into four groups, to facilitate learning and memorization. Assigning codes to Chinese characters is done by separating the constituent "radicals" of the characters.

Overview

Keys and "radicals"

The basic character components in Cangjie are called "radicals" (Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text字根) or "letters" (Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text字母). There are 24 radicals but 26 keys; the 24 radicals (the basic shapes Category:Articles containing traditional Chinese-language text基本字形) are associated with roughly 76 auxiliary shapes (Category:Articles containing traditional Chinese-language text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 (Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text日) can represent either itself, the slightly wider Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text曰, or a 90° rotation of itself. (For a more complete account of the 76-odd transpositions and rotations than the ones listed below, see the article on Cangjie entry in Chinese Wikibooks.)

The 24 keys are placed in four groups:

• Philosophical Group — corresponds to the letters 'A' to 'G' and represents the sun, the moon, and the five elements
• Strokes Group — corresponds to the letters 'H' to 'N' and represents the brief and subtle strokes
• Body-Related Group — corresponds to the letters 'O' to 'R' and represents various parts of the human anatomy
• Shapes Group — corresponds to the letters 'S' to 'Y' and represents complex and enclosed character forms

Group	Key	Name	Auxiliary shapes[4]	Examples[4]
Philosophical group	A	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text日 sun		：日月 ：中土日 ：日山 ：日竹月山
	B	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text月 moon		：月一十 ：月月月 ：月月心水 ：卜月竹土
	C	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text金 gold		：金卜廿山 ：金弓中竹 ：卜中弓金 ：田金
	D	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text木 wood		：木人人 ：田木 ：木竹 ：心木
	E	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text水 water		：戈一水 ：水戈 ：水金口 ：戈十水
	F	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text火 fire		：竹木火 ：日口火 ：女火女戈火 ：一火
	G	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text土 earth		：土卜人 ：一土月 ：土口 ：木土廿戈
Stroke group	H	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text竹 bamboo (Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text斜 apostrophe)		：竹日弓日 ：竹日 ：弓竹尸 ：竹人日山
	I	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text戈 dagger axe (Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text點 dot)		：竹手戈 ：戈弓人 ：戈月金弓 ：土戈
	J	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text十 ten (Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text交 cruciform)		：十口 ：卜十大尸十 ：十女 ：廿十一一
	K	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text大 big (Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text叉 cross)		：大大大大 大口 ：卜大 ：大一人月
	L	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text中 centre (Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text緃 vertical)		：人中 ：弓中 ：中土日 ：中戈十十
	M	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text一 one (Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text橫 horizontal)		：日一 ：尸一尸戈一 ：一竹日火 ：竹金一
	N	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text弓 bow (Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text鈎 hook)		：弓卜女戈 ：一土中弓 ：弓竹尸 ：弓日山 ：弓人竹廿人
Body parts group	O	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text人 person		：女戈人 ：弓日心人 ：水人田卜 ：人一一 ：戈弓人
	P	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text心 heart		：田心 ：心竹日 ：廿金心 ：十大心 ：心廿 ：人戈心 ：一口心口山
	Q	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text手 hand		：人一口手 ：手一弓 ：弓弓手人 ：竹手月山 ：人手
	R	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text口 mouth		：口弓人 ：一口 ：尸口口口 ：十口中口
Character shapes group	S	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text尸 corpse		：尸人 ：尸山 ：尸一口 ：尸中尸中 ；尸十
	T	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text廿 twenty		：廿一 ：廿日 ：廿日十 ：卜心廿一 ：月廿 ：卜廿
	U	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text山 mountain		：人山 ：月山 ：弓木山 ：廿山月
	V	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text女 woman		：戈竹一女 ：一女弓一 ：竹難女卜女 ：手一女
	W	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text田 field		：十田十 ：田戈口一 ：田十
	Y	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text卜 fortune telling		：弓戈卜 ：卜戈竹山 ：一中月卜 ：卜女女女
Collision/ Difficult key*	X	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text難 difficult	(1) disambiguation of Cangjie code decomposition collisions (2) code for a "difficult-to-decompose" part
Special character key*	Z	Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text重 collision	This key is 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 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text。,、,「 」,『 』). Note: Some variants use Z as a collision key instead of X. In those systems, Z has the name "collision" (Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text重) and X has the name "difficult" (Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text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" (Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text造) or some other name.
Wildcard	Shift + 8 (*)	Wildcard	It can replace any in-between keys. It is useful for unknown guesses when you are sure about the first and last input. E.g. Input Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text竹*Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text竹 will include: Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text身, Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text物, Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text秒, Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text第 (in this case, the output is identical to that of Simplified Cangjie.)

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

Chu Bong-Foo has provided alternate names for some letters according to their characteristics. For example, H (Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text竹) is also called Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text斜, which means slant. The names form a rhyme to help learners memorize the letters, each group being in a line (the sounds of final characters are given in parentheses):

Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text日 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text月 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text金 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text木 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text水 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text火 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text土; tǔ

Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text斜 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text點 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text交 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text叉 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text縱 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text橫 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text鈎; gōu

Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text人 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text心 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text手 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text口; kǒu

Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text側 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text並 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text仰 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text紐 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text方 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text卜; bǔ

Keyboard layout

Early development

Initially, the Cangjie input method was not intended to produce a character in any character set. Instead, it was part of an integrated system consisting of the Cangjie input rules and a Cangjie controller board. This 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 the Apple II. 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 Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text文, the Cangjie codes do not get converted to any character encoding and the actual string "yk" is stored. The Cangjie code for each character (a string of 1 to 5 lowercase letters plus a space) was the encoding of that particular character.

A particular "feature" of this early system is that, if one sends random lowercase words to it, the character generator will attempt to construct Chinese characters according to the Cangjie decomposition rules, sometimes causing strange, unknown characters to appear. This unintended feature, "automatic generation of characters", is described in the manual and is responsible for producing more than 10,000 of the 15,000 characters that the system can handle. The name Cangjie, evocative of the creation of new characters, was indeed 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, which is used for the 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 a random text file is displayed, as the user would not know which of the candidates is correct.

Issues

Cangjie was designed to be an easy-to-use system to help promote the use of Chinese computing. However, many users find Cangjie is difficult to learn and use, with many difficulties caused by poor instruction.Category:All articles with unsourced statementsCategory:Articles with unsourced statements from July 2007^{[citation needed]}

Versions

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 (Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text第三代倉頡) is the most common and supported natively by Microsoft Windows. Version 5 (Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text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 is supported by iOS, and supported by Microsoft Windows since Windows Vista. Before Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows needs to install HKSCS update to support Cangjie Version 5.^[7]

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 classic Mac OS resembles both Version 3 and Version 5.

Version 5, like the original Cangjie input method, was created directly by Chu. He 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 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

Most modern implementations of Cangjie input method editors (IME) 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 the Smart Common Input Method (SCIM).
• Some IMEs provide one or more wildcard keys, usually but not always * and/or ?, that allow 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 the X window Chinese INput XIM server (xcin), the Smart Common Input Method (SCIM), and the IME of the Founder Group (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 the "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 the Smart Common Input Method (SCIM).
• Some IMEs provide an "association" (Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text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 the NJStar Chinese word processor.

Besides the wildcard key, many of these features are 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, Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text簡易; jiǎnyì or Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text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

Many researchers have discussed ways to decompose Chinese characters into their major components, and tried to build applications based on the decomposition system. The idea can be referred to as the study of the Genes of Chinese Characters [zh]. Cangjie codes offer a basis for such an endeavour. Academia Sinica in Taiwan^[8] and Jiaotong University in Shanghai^[9] have similar projects as well.

One direct application of the use of decomposed characters is the possibility of computing the similarities between different Chinese characters.^[10] 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, visually similar characters can be found by computation. Integrating this with pronunciation information enables computer-assisted learning of Chinese characters.^[11]

See also

• Chinese input methods for computers
• Keyboard layout
• More complete table of input shapes at Chinese Wikibooks
• OpenVanilla – a framework that provides facilities to use Cangjie on Mac OS X.

Notes

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: these footnotes should be linked to the places in the text above they refer to, e.g. with Template:efn. Please help improve this article if you can. (May 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

• Taipei: Chwa! Taiwan Inc. (Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text全華科技圖書公司). Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text倉頡中文資訊碼 : Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text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" (Category:Articles containing Chinese-language text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 https://web.archive.org/web/20050206223713/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 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.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cangjie input method.Category:Commons category link is on Wikidata

• Online Cangjie Input Method 網上倉頡輸入法
• Chinese Character Database: With Word-formations Phonologically Disambiguated According to the Cantonese Dialect at The Chinese University of Hong Kong Research Centre for Humanities Computing: A Chinese character database covering the entire set of Big-5 Chinese characters (5401 Level 1 and 7652 Level 2 Hanzi) as well as 7 additional ETen Hanzi. Cangjie input codes are shown for each character in the database. Note: The Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS - 2001) is not included in this database.
• Mingzhu generator(in Chinese)Category:Articles with Chinese-language sources (zh): Chu Bong Foo's page. Includes the executable, sourcecode and instructions. Mingzhu is a Canjie character generator that runs on MS Windows.
• Friend of the Cangjie: a Cangjie reference and a place where it is possible to download the Cangjie 5 for various operating systems, and Cangjie's supplementary input code lists for inputting the Simplified characters
• CjExplorer: a tool for learning Cangjie. The Cangjie code for a highlighted Chinese character will be displayed when the tool is running.
• Overview of the Cang-Jie Method: a resource for English speakers to learn the rules and method of Cangjie