how does a chinese keyboard input....

[Sandeep Krishna]

hi,   guys, can anyone tell me how does a Chinese Keyboard take inputs... i mean that Chinese has more than a thousand characters... and also majorly their script is Ideographics or characters represent symbols...   then how can a keyboard incorporate such volume of characters in thier limited no of keys....   or are the keyboards based on Charactersets that are phonetic???   one more thing.... does the pressing of a key in such keyboards return their Unicode values or ASCII values that are comprehended as mapped chinese characters by the OS or the word-processor......   kindly clarify.......   regards,   Sandeep   ***********************************************************************************************         SANDEEP KRISHNA Member Technical Staff (Priceline.com) H.C.L. Technologies Limited A-1 C&D, Sector -16, NOIDA, UP, India. Ph:  91-11-91-4516321 (extn. 1062) Fax: 91-11-91-4510713, 4510226 E-Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]