USER INTERFACE AND DATABASE STRUCTURE FOR CHINESE PHRASAL STROKE AND PHONETIC TEXT INPUT

摘要

The invention provides a stroke and phonetic text input entry system that has substantially the same definition of stroke match as that used in T9, where the input is a phrasal input rather than a character input. The invention solves the problem of Chinese phrasal stroke and phonetic text input by allowing users to enter an arbitrary number of strokes for each character in a phrase, where each character is separated by a delimiter. In this way, the invention provides a system that is easily learned and efficiently applied. Thus, the invention makes it possible for users to enter multiple characters while keeping their single character input habits. Each Chinese character has a standard stroke sequence in Guo Biao (GB), which is the standard for mainland China, or multiple sequences for BIG5 Chinese Character Encoding for Traditional (Complex) Characters, which is the de facto standard in Taiwan but not used in mainland China. With the invention, users do not have to enter the complete sequence for a single character, but instead can stop at any point and enter a delimiter, which indicates the end of the previous character and the start of the next character. The whole stroke sequence entered by the user can then be split into a few groups that are separated by zero or more delimiters. Phrases can then be identified by user entry of groups of characters. The presently preferred phrase matching criteria are as follows: the first stroke group matches the leading stroke sequence of the first character of the phrase; the second stroke group matches the leading stroke sequence of the second character of the phrase, etc; the phrases that match the entered stroke sequence are presented to the user for selection. A user interface design for Chinese phrasal stroke text input is also provided.