still fighting to write hanzi

evelyne
January 12, 2008, 04:15 PM posted in General Discussion

hello!

thanks again for helping me, but I've tried several processes (Windows XP)and now I don't know how to have the button to write in chinese and how to toggle beetween the roman letters and hanzi. Where  is it hidden? I also tried NJStar,  yes, it works but how do you put the characters on your documents, or emails once written on a NJStar document?

I feel really stupid!

Evelyne

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christian
January 12, 2008, 08:38 PM

Hello Evelyne :) You can select text in NJStar, hit "ctrl+c" to copy it. Next place your cursor where you would like the text (for instance in a word document) and then press "ctrl+v" to paste it.

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trevorb
January 12, 2008, 09:32 PM

With XP it should be fairly straight forward especially if you are using simplified Hanzi, just load the additional keyboads in the regional option in control panel. This will then let you access the characters you need by typing pinyin and suggesting. The language bar has a number of settings to call it up but mine normally shows up in the taskbar as EN on startup, clicking that lets me change. I personally tend to use the tablet versions of the OS and nowadays vista as I find it useful to be able to use the tablet input to write the Hanzi. As the software needs you to do the strokes in the right order it helps to remember how to right them. Now if I could just start to get a handle on the Grammar...! I

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xiaohu
January 12, 2008, 10:26 PM

Hi Evelyne, My suggestion is to forget using NJ Star, as much as I love it, it's more compicated to use than the system built right into Windows, and the Windows system is much easier to use for those who don't recognize characters as well, because NJ Star will bring up a list of possible character combinations that match the sounds that you have entered, then you have to pick the correct ones from the list, whereas the Microsoft system will guess at which ones you mean based on the context of the sentence you've entered, then when you get the full sentence entered in, simply use the arrow keys to scroll back through the document and check your work. Also with the Microsoft sytem you can use Zhuyin input and toggle easily between Traditional and Simplified characters. Also you can readily install new input methods, and Windows comes with an input system that is exactly like NJ Star.

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christian
January 13, 2008, 04:07 PM

Hello Evelyne, I've been looking into your problem a bit more, and found this link , it's the link I used to learn to type 汉字 on the computer. Don't let yourself get discouraged, and let us know how it goes :)

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mark
January 13, 2008, 11:35 PM

Once you get whatever IMEs you want installed on Windows you use alt-shift to toggle between them. Each IME is a bit different, but most of the Chinese ones seem to allow toggling between English and 汉字 by clicking on 英/中 in the small menu bar they display on your screen.

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evelyne
January 14, 2008, 05:36 PM

Hello Christian, Trevorb, Xiahu and Mark! nice to have all this help! but today it's already late in France and I will try what you suggest first thing tomorrow!and if you see something coming from me written in hanzi, you can be very proud! (me too) We all will be great winners! For me computers are more complicated than Chinese!! Mingtian jian! Evelyne