Lost the old Mac input method for entering Zhuyin with a qwerty keyboard layout

[Dwight Johnson]

I live in Taiwan but type English with a US keyboard. In the past I used a traditional Chinese input method (I think ETEN something) that had an option that used a regular US keyboard layout and would adjust the Chinese phonetic symbols as I type. I can't find the settings to do that any more.  If you know Chinese, here is an example:

I type I see
J ㄓ
JI ㄐㄧ
JIA ㄐㄧㄚ
JIAN ㄐㄧㄢ
JIANG ㄐㄧㄤ
space 江

 
Now, using the Zhuyin-Eten input method, I have to type ge0space to get 江
Alternately, using the Zhuyin input method, I have to type ru;space to get 江
There are two reasons I'm trying to do this.
 
One is that I'm more comfortable with the Zhuyin characters for pronunciation. The Q and Z in Pinyin still aren't natural to me. But I am also used to the QWERTY keyboard. The method I once had used fuzzy logic to figure out which pronunciation I was looking for as I typed a variety of characters that might be in one of the other romanization systems. It isn't locked into just hitting the exact keys to get the character.
 
Second, is a curiosity question. I used to have this input method that I found useful and now it seems to be gone. It isn't the first time Apple has removed something I found useful (.mac, iWeb, hypercard, etc). The Chinese dictation and input methods that I used in OS 9 and maybe in early X seem to be in this group of extinct tools. Does anyone know what happened to the old Chinese input methods and has any 3rd party picked up the functionality that apple dropped?

[TenThousandThings]

Hanin used to do that in the old days, so you're probably thinking of it. There was a setting to allowed you to set the display mode to Zhuyin while you typed in the romanization, and it was flexible -- you could use romanized Zhuyin ("MPS-2"), Yale, or Pinyin. See:

http://chinesemac.org/pages/old/hanin_5.html

The Hanin dictionaries are still in the current Apple TC input methods (see "specialized vocabularies" in the preferences), so a vestige of Hanin remains. But what you're talking about is gone.

You could maybe look into OpenVanilla and see if they've got anything like that (I don't recall).

Otherwise, Apple sells a Zhuyin/Cangjie keyboard that is QWERTY, so you could transition to that -- there would be a learning curve but at least you could see what you're doing. OS X 10.8 and above supports the Zhuyin-ETEN keyboard layout -- since you are in Taiwan, it should be easy to buy one of those. I think a lot of people prefer that layout.

ER

[TenThousandThings]

I had forgotten about this, but Hanin was a prominent part of the Apple TC input method in OS X 10.3 and 10.4:

http://chinesemac.org/pages/old/tcim_x4.html#Hanin

IIRC, Apple bought Hanin in order to adapt it to Unicode, OS X, and Big-5E. We stopped doing English-language user guides for the input methods with OS X 10.5 (Leopard), because Apple started doing them at that point, but I see from our archives that Hanin was still alive in OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), but it was no longer so flexible, only supporting "MPS-2" a.k.a. Zhuyin ershi 注音二式 for the kind of input you are describing. It was gone in OS X 10.7 (Lion).

Eric

[Ho Ian]

Maybe try to use this solution？

中文輸入法表格檔

https://sites.google.com/site/ianho7979/InputMethodTables

and

正體中文詞庫OpenVanilla

https://sites.google.com/site/ianho7979/associatedphrases

OpenVanilla + CnsMPSII2018-03_OV.cin (Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II) or CnsPhonetic2018-03_OV.cin (Zhuyin)

Dwight Johnson於 2018年3月5日星期一 UTC+8上午3時33分12秒寫道：