Cangjie Input Method - Variants of Cangjie

Variants of Cangjie

Most modern implementations of Cangjie IMEs provide various convenient features:

• Some IMEs list all characters beginning with the code you have typed; for example, if you type A, the system gives you all characters whose Cangjie code begins with A so that you can select the correct character if it is on the screen; if you type another A, the list is shortened to give all characters whose code begins with AA. Examples of such implementations include the IME in Mac OS X, and SCIM.
• Some IMEs provide one or more wildcard keys, usually but not always * and/or ?, that allows the user to omit part(s) of the Cangjie code; the system will display a list of matching characters for the user to choose. Examples include xcin, SCIM, and the IME in the Founder (University of Peking) typesetting systems. Microsoft Windows's "standard" Changjie IME allows * to substitute for in-between characters (effectively reducing it to Simplified Cangjie entries), while New Changjie IME allows * as a wildcard anywhere except for the first character.
• Some IMEs provide an "abbreviation" feature, where impossible Cangjie codes are interpreted as abbreviations for the Cangjie codes of more than one character. This allows more characters to be input with fewer keys. An example is SCIM.
• Some IMEs provide an "association" (聯想 lianxiang) feature, where the system anticipates what you are going to type next, and provides you with a list of characters or even phrases associated with what the user has typed. An example is the Microsoft Changjie IME.
• Some IMEs present the list of candidate characters differently depending on the frequency of character use (how often that character has been typed by the user). An example is the Cangjie IME in NJStar.

Besides the wildcard key, many of these features are very convenient for casual users but unsuitable for touch-typists because they make the Cangjie IME unpredictable.

There have also been various attempts to "simplify" Cangjie one way or another:

• Simplified Cangjie has the same radicals, auxiliary shapes, decomposition rules, and short list of exceptions as Cangjie, but only the first and last codes are used if more than two codes are required in Cangjie.