http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/ Engadget Comments for iPhone firmware 2.0 adds Chinese handwriting recognition, Newton sweats http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2008 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 1:21PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 1:24PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/
Nice!]]>May 5th 2008 1:32PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 4:15PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/i don't know if it's going to be in the fw 2.0, i doubt it won't. but one of the chinese input WeFit has already had it, it's not official yet, but here is the video from WeiPhone forum
http://www.weiphone.com/thread-92898-1-1.html
it was posted 1 month ago, and wretch.cc is just a blog site from Taiwan, like my space, so source is not reliable, it could be in the official fw, but i rather believe it's "another WeFit" for traditional chinese.]]>May 5th 2008 4:47PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/

]]>May 5th 2008 1:23PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/*backlight-immmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm*
*does this, does that*

Nope. That phone thingy still has a long way to go.]]>May 5th 2008 1:25PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 1:28PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 1:56PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 1:29PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 6:12PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/
but, the problem with these softwares is that you MUST know the stroke order or your characters OR, you must know pin yin in order to lookup symbols.

Unles you have extensive language immersion in Chinese - forget this one.]]>May 5th 2008 1:30PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/then download HWpen it gives you the smae thing but with support for english letters and numbers]]>May 5th 2008 1:32PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 1:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 1:41PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/
believe me, I'm not a cultural bigot... but I don't like the idea that just because it's in the US means that it should support spanish... really it wouldn't bother me if the iPhone did have a spanish keyboard... it's mainly just the spanish labels, signs and such at stores (Lowes, Wal-Mart, etc.) that bother me.]]>May 5th 2008 1:46PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 1:54PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/
besides the legal implications of doing that (contracts, death notices,etc) it would cause many different groups to sue the government claiming that "they were being discriminated against".

America's official language should REMAIN American English.

Anyone who comes here should be tested before given entry. They should know American currency and they should know how to read English signs, and maps.]]>May 5th 2008 1:54PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/
I hadn't realized one could do that. I have needed accent marks and the like plenty in the past.

This wasn't political. Just that a lot of us in the USA speak Spanish.

And Flashpoint, the USA has NO official language.]]>May 5th 2008 1:59PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/
Next thing you know, they'll have an "intelligence" requirement prior to the allowance of entry into the USA. The fortunate consequence is the denial of your entry.

Fun Facts you should know about:

a) There is *no* official language for the USA. Sorry, but true.

b) There is no country "America." There is the "United States of America" or "United States", but when you say "American" you should also know you're including our friends to the north, the Canadians.

c) re: legal implications, believe it or not, the government decides when to let itself get sued. Furthermore, please go to law school or consult your own attorney when discussing the legal ramifications of "anti-discrimination" laws in the US. They're not as broad as you think they are.

d) re: testing before entry, and if we allowed someone like you to be in control of national policy... well we could kiss our tourism industry good bye (and scare away loads of international talent, etc. etc.) See, "weak dollar", "international tourism", "international brain drain"
]]>May 5th 2008 2:53PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/You are a dolt. First of all, as others have said, there is no official language of the United States. Secondly, Spanish will never become a "2nd OFFICIAL LANGUAGE," so calm down. Do you really think the people in charge of our country would let that happen?

Last, but certainly not least, if we had the kind of testing that you think is such a great idea, we would turn away a great many number of people who are unfamiliar with our American ways yet have potentially substantial contributions to fields of mathematics and science. Plus, God save us from that exam ever being applied to Americans themselves. You'd deport half the country for not knowing where the USA was on a map of the world, let alone anyplace else.]]>May 5th 2008 4:27PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://appleguru.org/spanish_kb.PNG

Only difference between US KB and Spanish one? The label on the space bar. Hence, there is NO need for a "spanish keyboard" option; the standard US works just fine for spanish. Hold down A for access to á, hold down E for access to é, hold down n for access to ñ.. what more do you need?]]>May 5th 2008 5:00PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/
to illustrate this, allow me to demonstrate the writing of the letter T. To write the letter T, one could begin with the horizontal stroke and then draw the stem, or they could draw the stem from the bottom up..

with chinese characters, there is only one way to write each character...

the iphone will probably take the order of strokes into account, so it will be much easier than imagined to write a complex character, no matter how sloppy it is.

however, there is a cursive version of chinese which much more resembles scribbles, and seeing as most people like to write that way (it saves time), i'm not sure the phone will be able to recognize that.]]>May 5th 2008 1:52PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 2:36PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 3:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 2:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/
Everyone, let's try strapping pens to our fingers for a few days. See how well we right.]]>May 5th 2008 2:10PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/
Feck.]]>May 5th 2008 2:11PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 2:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/
Seriously, I hate curved keyboards :P]]>May 5th 2008 2:23PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 2:23PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/
Good times, good times.]]>May 5th 2008 3:17PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/
Q: How many Apple Newton users does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Foux! There to eat lemons, axe gravy soup.]]>May 5th 2008 4:52PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 4:32PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/Okay, then what are we supposed to say instead of 'Americans' when we're merely specifying those of us in the U.S.? 'United-Statesians'?

People in Canada = Canadians. People in the U.S.A. = Americans. People in Mexico = Mexicans.

I do, however, agree with the rest of your post. :)]]>May 5th 2008 4:41PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/.]]>May 5th 2008 4:42PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/
:)

or 'burger-eating invasion monkeys' as someone on the television just said lol.

i see your predicament though. while 'american' isn't politically correct to use, there isn't really another name for you.]]>May 5th 2008 5:51PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/
Just like a Chinese person might be referred as an Asian; a Mexican may also be referred as an American.

As for the Chinese Handwriting Recognition functionality, it would be useful for users that do not want to learn to use an Input Method Editor or having troubles in using Input Method Editor for various reasons. (For example, Hong Kong people who generally do not use any kind of phonemic system but rather a graphological-base Input Method Editor to enter Chinese on computers. That does require some learning effort.)

Although WeFit and NativeCN already provides different kinds of IME to be use with iPhone's native English (U.S) keyboard, the icons for each key is rather small to accommodate the marking for different IME systems.

There's one more thing, in busy cities like Hong Kong or Taipei, people often type messages when they are taking subway trains or other public transportation; iPhones' little on screen keys are not easy to be hit on accurately (especially when the train is moving).

In contrast, an advance enough Chinese handwriting recognition software would be able to guess the correct word, or even word group that the user are trying to write by evaluating many factors, including the shape, the strokes order, the meaning connection between the last word entered and the current word that the user write, the word usage habit and frequency for the current user.

Chinese handwriting recognition products for computers has been on the market for quite a long time and the products leading vendors of that business (e.g. PenPower) DO perform the evaluations I mentioned above. After a extend period of usage, those products are able to pick up your writing habit and make better guess of what you are writing.

I am not sure if the iPhone's implementation will be as advance as what I mentioned above, but I think it should perform as least as capable as phones from Nokia, or Sony Ericsson with that functionality.

(Wow, did I seem to talk too much !?)]]>May 5th 2008 5:59PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 4:55PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 5:01PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/I probably could buy a couple and peddle them off to my relatives]]>May 5th 2008 5:07PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 5:31PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 6:15PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 6:56PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 6:54PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 5th 2008 8:17PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.iphone.org.hk/cgi-bin/ch/topic_show.cgi?id=1319&h=1&bpg=1&age=0

NativeCN not only enables Chinese and Japanese input, but allows Chinese input by virtually any text method you'd like (Pinyin, Wubi, Zhuyin). The nice part is that when you enable any of the Chinese input methods, you ALWAYS have Japanese enabled too, however the Japanese will only recognize your text as Hiragana characters/syllables and not give you Kanji options unless Japanese is the main IME.

I use HwPen for the the character writing recognition which has just been updated in the newest version to include both Simplified and Traditional characters (it will display 繁体 [sic] or 简体 instead of just 中文 now). It is very intelligent and seems to not only understand stroke order but many "shorthand" notations. For example, if you write similar to 歹 it will also give you 餐 as an option. I believe it also understands "script" as Oliver was stating as I wrote 明 in a sloppy script-style and it did indeed give me that as one of the choices.

Both of these applications are pretty nice and used in conjunction can be all you need for Chinese/Japanese IME until a more "official" input method is released. Honestly, I could live with these two, they are pretty neat, especially NativeCN.

The only quirky issue seems to be encoding. I haven't investigated it totally but it seems if you are using Chinese instead of Japanese and send an email with Japanese and Kanji, the Kanji (Chinese characters) may be excluded but the Hiragana will remain. I believe that's due to reading the email with the wrong encoding instead of UTF-8. I haven't tested this enough to be sure what the problem is but I have heard reports of this.

Have fun.
]]>May 5th 2008 8:34PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/
Supported languages are Norwegian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese... ]]>May 5th 2008 9:51PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/to carry them separate if you want to get any work done. They could
call it the iPhone Air.]]>May 6th 2008 12:44AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/05/iphone-firmware-2-0-adds-chinese-handwriting-recognition-newton/May 6th 2008 8:43PM