How Do Chinese Keyboards Work?
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Keyboard Configuration
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Modern Chinese keyboards are overlaid either on a standard Qwerty or Dvorak keyboard. Existing keyboards can be made into Chinese input devices by placing stickers on each key. The stickers contain either Taiwanese Bo Po Mo Fo phonetic symbols or Chinese romanized pronunciation. They also contain parts of Chinese characters called "radicals" or "particles." The portion of the keys that will be used to type Chinese will depend on the input method selected in the Input Method Editor (IME).
Input Method Editor
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Unlike English and other European languages that require a single 8-bit byte to store a single character, Chinese requires two 8-bit bytes, or a total of 16 bits, to store each Chinese word. The way that this 16-bit character is input can vary, depending on location and the preference of the typist.
Software is used to re-interpret key press sequences. This software is called an Input Method Editor, or IME. By installing an IME, the key press sequences are re-mapped to the additional Chinese character input methods, such as those printed alongside standard English characters.
Whether to use an English character phonetic system, like Mainland China's Pinyin system, or a specialized phonetic system, such as the Taiwanese Bo Po Mo Fo system, is a selection in the IME. Professional Chinese typists often prefer a radical-based input method, which can also be selected via the IME.
Regardless of the type of IME selected, the Chinese IME will bring up a list of character possibilities from which the typist will select the correct character. The Chinese IME works a bit like an English cellular phone's T9 input.
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Complex vs. Simplified Chinese
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An IME simply re-maps a keyboard's input to the appropriate Chinese character. Because there are two main ways of noting Chinese pronunciation, Pinyin in China and most other parts of the Chinese speaking world, and Bo Po Mo Fo in Taiwan, most IMEs will support both systems.
There are also two different sets of contemporary Chinese characters. Mainland China uses simplified Chinese characters. Taiwan and several other countries use more traditional complex characters. Because there is a one to one correlation, an IME can be mapped to either a complex or simplified character set.
This means that a person can type a document using complex characters and convert the document to simplified characters by switching out character sets.
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