Comments on: Live Ink and Chinese Literacy

By: poagao

poagao — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:45:07 +0000

I’d love to be able to write my Chinese blog top-to-bottom/right-to-left. Too bad Wordpress doesn’t support that kind of format.

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 11:33:51 +0000

I have always found that if things are spaced better, then it’s easier to read. I find that having space around the text between paragraphs makes it a lot easier. Trying to read books which have very little space around words and are cramped makes it very tricky.

I also find that it’s easier reading things which aren’t black on white but black on another(light) colour….. I think it’s a scientific thing as the white bounces the rays off a lot more than the colours when going back into the eye.

By: Todd

Todd — Sat, 26 May 2007 10:56:30 +0000

Haha, loved the poetic parody.

By: Brendan O'Kane

Brendan O'Kane — Thu, 24 May 2007 10:09:16 +0000

I don’t actually know of any columnar input systems. My impression is that it’s all determined by the word processor, rather than by the IME itself — and that likewise online text direction would be handled by CSS formatting, which would leave the text unchanged from the point of view of the Nanny’s baleful eye. (I think MS Word has this ability; I know that Apple’s word processor can do it, but I haven’t ever actually tried — will give it a shot when I get home.) I don’t know how Taras made that post — going by the source code, it looks to have been done manually rather than by any CSS trickery.

By: Feng37

Feng37 — Thu, 24 May 2007 09:59:36 +0000

penultimate!
BOK, can you point towards some columnar Chinese input systems? I’d like to play around and see if it’s any more effective in skipping around keyword filters, like the ubiquitous 冰/点.

Something like this:
http://taras.blog.sohu.com/45417359.html

By: doug

doug — Mon, 21 May 2007 01:52:38 +0000

I think you need the word “now” at the end of the pentultimate line to keep the syntax and pacing in line with the “blue eyed boy” line from cummings.

and i like the idea.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Sat, 19 May 2007 00:11:34 +0000

Reminds me of how Henry Glassie broke speech patterns into staggered lines in his transcriptions of an old farmer’s stories–remarkably effective in suggesting the rhythms of the original speaker, and added greatly to one’s understanding of how the speaker wished himself to be understood.

By: Kevin S.

Kevin S. — Fri, 18 May 2007 23:29:19 +0000

I have always been a slow reader (2 minutes per page for a paperback novel). Thanks for pointing out this idea. I’m willing to try anything that helps me to speed up my reading.

By: Brendan O'Kane

Brendan O'Kane — Fri, 18 May 2007 09:42:47 +0000

True — that’s why segmentation would be more difficult than in Engilsh. Still, it seems like it could be feasible as long as the software doing it had a reasonably good dictionary and was smart about recognizing things like personal names. Adso isn’t perfect at this, but it’s generally pretty good at figuring out where words begin and end — certainly better than Google’s translation engine!

By: yz

yz — Fri, 18 May 2007 09:39:55 +0000

love the idea, but one sentence could have different meanings by different breaks…