The Fool wrote: >And it doesn't address the issue, of keyboards which was my primary >point. When you have to Know a minumum of 3000 characters to be >considered literate, the complexity of creating content with a keyboard >is an exceptionally difficult process for the average person. With latin >based languages, it is far less difficult for the average person to >create content, like a letter. > We teach Chinese (and Japanese) and have a dedicated computer lab for Asian Languages, using Windows and 101-key keyboards. The students type nothing but their names in English, and generating a web-page using Frontpage 2000 is part of the curriculum (and assessment) at several year levels. They produce quite impressive results purely in Chinese, even in first year. We used to have special programs which created the characters from letter combinations (phonetically related to the character) but now the Windows IMEs are so easy for the students to use we just use the Microsoft stuff. Keyboards aren't an issue these days.
Cheers Russell C.
