Less is More: From 9
to 6
Wang Code 6
Digits
A
revolutionary method that allows you to
type 80,000 Chinese characters with 6
digits
19
December 2006
According to the figures given
by China’s Ministry of Information
Industry, by the end of the October 2006,
China had 450 million mobile phone users, and
by the end of October this year 350 billion
text messages were sent. Inputting Chinese
characters into a tiny handset, though
painstaking, has grown into one of the chief
methods of communication in daily life as
well as in business situations.
One of the most commonly used
methods of inputting Chinese is by hanyu
pinyin, a code system that uses Latin
alphabet to spell the sounds of the official
Chinese language. Though better than other
known pinyin input systems, still it has
inherited flaws. The requirement of selecting
a character from a menu of candidates with
same sound makes the typing absurdly
laborious and time consuming. And the process
of input is actually more about coding than
writing - the disconnection from the written
form presents a real challenge to general
population’s handwriting skills.
Salvation came in 2004 when a
professor in China demonstrated how he had
integrated the structure of written
characters and Arabic numerals. It
practically means it is 9, instead of 26,
keys that are all needed when typing Chinese.
It does take a bit more effort to learn, but
once having mastered "Wang Code 9
Keys" or "Wang Code 9 Digits",
as it is named, you would be able to write in
Chinese on computer much faster than you
would in English. In reality, an experienced
user can input a maximum of 100 Chinese
characters per minute.
The
inventor of the Wang Code Input Methods
Just at the time when you
think the things couldn’t get any better,
on Saturday, 16 December, the professor
announced in Beijing’s Great Hall of People
that he had successfully turned his "9
Digits" upside down. So now "6
Digits" rules.
The basic principle of the 6D
is to have six digits corresponding to six
key strokes of Chinese characters. The
numbers from 1 to 6 represent a horizontal
line (一), a vertical line
(|), a left stroke (／), a right stroke (＼), a turn (ㄥ) and a square (口) respectively. By coding the
first four plus the last strokes of a
character, the desired character will appear.
With this revolutionary
method, anyone who knows how to write Chinese
on paper needs only five minutes to learn how
to write Chinse on computer.
The biggest draw of this
wonder method is of enabling cell phone users
to compose text messages at a speed as
rapidly as spring rain falling on the ground,
and that probably is why the inventor
formally named the "6 Keys" or
"6 Digits" 王码春雨 (Wang Code Spring
Rain).
Previously it was believed by
many that due to the unique nature of the
Chinese written language, there was very
little likelihood of a "standard"
method evolving. And the Chinese government
is going to prove it is wrong - A standard
text messaging input method is said will be
promulgated next year.
