HK1112770B - Method and apparatus for inputing chinese phrase - Google Patents

Description

Method and apparatus for inputting Chinese phrases

Technical Field

The invention relates to the field of Chinese character input, in particular to a Chinese phrase input method and equipment.

Background

When the electronic equipment generally applied at present inputs Chinese characters, the corresponding relation between English letters and Chinese character codes on the keys of the keyboard is firstly established, so that Chinese character code sequences can be correspondingly input by sequentially pressing the keys of the English letter marks corresponding to the codes on the keyboard, and then the input code sequences are converted into Chinese characters, thereby completing the input of the Chinese characters.

In reality, by using the method, a plurality of devices can realize Chinese character single character input, even Chinese character phrase input. The Chinese character single word input means that only one Chinese character can be input by one input operation, and the Chinese character phrase input means that one Chinese character phrase can be input by one input operation. From the support of single Chinese character input to the support of phrase Chinese character input, the Chinese character input method goes through a development process, and the change greatly improves the efficiency of Chinese character input.

It is well known that with the increasing popularity of mobile phones, ITU-T keyboards are widely used. The ITU-T keypad is a standard keypad that mainly includes the number keys 0-9. These numeric keys may be used to enter a telephone number. Also, some of the number keys correspond to 26 letters and are used to enter these letters. For example, the number 2 key represents A, B, and C; 3 represents D, E and F; 4 represents G, H and I, 5 represents J, K and L; 6 represents M, N and O; 7 represents P, Q, R and S; 8 represents T, U and V; and 9 represents W, X, Y and Z. Chinese stroke phrase input is becoming increasingly popular because the basic elements of chinese stroke coding may be small, suitable for use in ITU-T keyboards. The biggest problem with stroke phrase input is that the user must enter "separators" between characters; otherwise the input engine cannot discern to which character the newly entered stroke belongs. The standard stroke phrase works as follows: the user firstly inputs a plurality of strokes of a first character; then inputting a separator; then the stroke of the next character is entered. For example, to enter "us" on the keypad, the user needs to press the key "3-1-2-0-3". Here key-0 is used as a separator.

In addition, in the case that one key corresponds to a plurality of pinyin codes simultaneously, and the corresponding plurality of pinyin codes have both initial consonants and final consonants, if there is no separator, the input engine cannot distinguish whether the newly input pinyin code belongs to the next word of the phrase. This situation is encountered when the ITU-T keyboard implements the pinyin input method.

Employing separators to enable phrase entry reduces input efficiency. Especially if the user needs to input multi-word phrases, a plurality of separators are needed, which greatly reduces the input efficiency. Furthermore, delimiters are also unnatural to the user, as the user may not know at all which keys on the keyboard are delimiter keys.

Disclosure of Invention

Aiming at the problem that Chinese character separators need to be input in the traditional Chinese phrase input method, the invention provides a method for inputting Chinese phrases without inputting separators.

According to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of inputting a chinese phrase in an electronic device having an input means divided into a first region and a second region, the method comprising the steps of: inputting a first code sequence of Chinese characters in a first area of the input device; inputting a second code sequence of the Chinese characters in a second area of the input device; phrases are retrieved for which the first word matches the first code sequence and the second word matches the second code sequence.

According to an embodiment of the invention, the Chinese character code is one of stroke, pinyin, zhuyin, shuangpin and wubi character code, and the first code sequence and the second code sequence can be code sequences formed according to different Chinese character coding modes.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, when multiple phrases are retrieved that match the input encoding sequence, a list of candidate phrases is displayed for user selection.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, the list of candidate phrases is ranked according to frequency of use and the ranking order may be dynamically adjusted.

According to another embodiment of the invention, when a new Chinese character code is input in the first area after the Chinese character code is input in the second area, the newly input Chinese character code is used as a third code sequence; and retrieving phrases based on the coded sequence of the three words.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, when a new Chinese character code is input in the first region after the Chinese character code is input in the second region, the new Chinese character code is added to the original first code sequence, so that the matching of the first character in the phrase is more accurate.

According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided an apparatus for inputting chinese phrases, comprising: the input device is divided into a first area and a second area and is used for respectively inputting Chinese character codes; the phrase library is used for storing a plurality of Chinese phrases; phrase input means for composing a code input from the first region into a first code sequence and a code input from the second region into a second code sequence; phrases having a first word matching the first encoded sequence and a second word matching the second encoded sequence are retrieved from the phrase library and the retrieved phrases are input.

According to one embodiment of the present invention, the input device is an ITU-T keyboard and said first region is the 1/2/3/4/5 key mapping the horizontal, vertical, left-falling, right-falling and 5-folding basic strokes of the Chinese character stroke code, respectively; and the second area is 7/8/9/0 key, which respectively maps 5 basic strokes of horizontal stroke, vertical stroke, left falling stroke, right falling stroke and turning stroke in the Chinese character stroke code.

According to another embodiment of the invention, the input device is a Qwerty keyboard, said first area being located in a left-hand region of the keyboard and said second area being located in a right-hand region of the keyboard.

Other features and advantages of the present invention will be apparent from the following description of the preferred embodiments, which illustrate the principles of the invention, when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

Drawings

FIG. 1 is a flow diagram of a Chinese phrase input method according to one embodiment of the invention;

FIG. 2 is a layout diagram of a numeric keypad mapping two sets of strokes, in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 3 is a layout diagram of a Qwerty keyboard mapping two sets of strokes, in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of a Chinese phrase input device in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram of a user interface for entering Chinese phrases in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention.

Detailed Description

Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail.

An electronic device using the Chinese phrase input method of the present invention is provided with an input device. It should be understood that there are a variety of electronic devices that may be used to input Chinese phrases. Such as a personal computer, PDA, mobile phone, etc. There are also many input devices for electronic devices, such as Qwerty keyboards, ITU-T keypads used by telephones, and pointing devices such as touch screens, mice, scroll wheels, etc. in conjunction with a virtual keyboard displayed on a computer screen. In the present invention, the input device is divided into two regions, each of which can input Chinese character codes.

Please note that there are many kinds of Chinese character encoding methods, such as full spelling, double spelling, phonetic notation, stroke, five-stroke, and mixed pronunciation and shape encoding, and any Chinese character encoding method can be used in the present invention. Similarly, it is also known to search for corresponding chinese characters based on a sequence of chinese character codes, e.g., a library of characters is ranked according to frequency of use to increase search speed, etc. The present invention does not relate to any particular method of retrieving chinese characters.

FIG. 1 is a flow diagram of a Chinese phrase input method in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention. The flow chart of fig. 1 will be described below in connection with a mobile phone and chinese character five stroke coding. For electronic devices such as mobile telephones, an ITU-T keyboard is typically provided. According to the invention, the ITU-T keyboard can be divided into two zones. For example, the first area is the 1/2/3/4/5 keys of the keyboard, which respectively input the 5 basic strokes of horizontal, vertical, left-falling, right-falling and turning-down of the Chinese character code. The second area is 7/8/9/0 key of the keyboard, and is also used for inputting 5 basic strokes of horizontal stroke, vertical stroke, left-falling stroke, right-falling stroke and turning stroke in Chinese character stroke code. Fig. 2 shows a schematic diagram of the above keyboard partition. In the following description, it is assumed that the user needs to input the phrase "we". The stroke code of Chinese character "I" is ノ - ノ Chinese character from left to right, ノ Chinese character from left to right. The stroke code of the Chinese characters is ノ strokes from Chinese character stroke to stroke.

As shown in fig. 1, the process begins at step 101. A numeric keypad input K1 is received at step 102. K1 is, for example, the button "3", i.e., the stroke "left-falling".

In step 102, the region where K1 is located is defined as the first region and the first code sequence S1 is set to the code corresponding to K1. I.e. keys 1/2/3/4/5 are defined as a first region and keys 7/8/9/0 are defined as a second region. At the same time, the first code sequence S1 is set to "left-off". Because two identical sets of strokes are mapped simultaneously on the numeric keypad, the user can arbitrarily select one of the sets to begin inputting the first word stroke sequence of the phrase. For example, the user may also first press the key "9" to enter the stroke "left-off". At this time, the button 7/8/9/0 is defined as a first region and the button 1/2/3/4/5 is defined as a second region. It should be understood that it is not necessary to dynamically define the first and second regions, but rather to allow the user to begin entering phrases in any region for the convenience of the user. It is possible to define only the key 1/2/3/4/5 as the first zone and only the key 7/8/9/0 as the second zone. Thus, the user must first press the first region key when entering a phrase.

At step 104, the word matching S1 is retrieved and displayed. For example, if the stroke "left-falling" is entered in step 102, a word starting with "left-falling" is retrieved and the retrieved word is displayed.

When there are multiple words matching the first encoded sequence S1, a list of candidate words may be displayed, typically according to frequency of use, to prompt or for selection by the user. Of course, the Chinese character codes corresponding to the input keys can also be displayed. For example, for an ITU-T keyboard, the key "2" may correspond to "a", "b", "c" in pinyin. The plurality of codes are displayed for prompt or user selection.

At step 105, the keypad input Ki continues to be received, i.e. the subsequent strokes entered by the user continue to be received. For example, the user presses the key "1", i.e., the stroke "horizontal". Typically, the user enters multiple encodings of the first word in order to reduce the duplication code. The number of input codes is generally determined by the coding mode and the requirements of the user.

In step 106, it is determined whether Ki belongs to the first zone. If so, it is determined that the user is still entering strokes of the first word and is not entering the next word of the phrase. Thus, the flow proceeds to step 107.

In step 107, since the user is inputting the stroke of the first word, the first encoding sequence S1 is set to the code corresponding to S1+ Ki, i.e. the code to be input in the first area constitutes the first encoding sequence S1. The flow then returns to step 104 to further retrieve and display the word matching S1. At this time, S1 is "left-off". And searching and displaying the Chinese characters of which the first two strokes are left-falling strokes.

If step 106 determines that Ki does not belong in the first field, e.g., Ki is the "9" button (i.e., the stroke "left-falling"), then it is determined that the user is beginning to enter the next word. The flow proceeds to step 108.

In step 108, the second code sequence S2 is set to S2+ Ki. In this case, the second coding sequence S2 is "left-off".

At step 109, phrases having the first word matching S1 and the second word matching S2 are retrieved and the retrieved phrases are displayed. The phrase where the first two strokes of the first word are "left-off" and the first stroke of the second word is "left-off" is retrieved at this time, where the "we" the user wishes to enter can be in the list.

FIG. 5 shows a schematic view of a user interface for entering the phrase "we" in a similar manner to the steps described above.

It should be understood that the present invention does not relate to a specific implementation of the search phrase. It is well known to retrieve phrases of phrases based on their respective word codes. Typically, to input phrases, an electronic device is provided with a corpus of phrases. A corpus of phrases is stored. The number of phrases is determined based on the storage and processing capabilities of the electronic device and the needs of the user. Thus, according to the codes of the characters input by the user, the corresponding phrases in the phrase library can be searched. If a plurality of phrases are matched with the coded sequence input by the user, a candidate list can be provided for the user to select according to the use frequency. This is a high frequency precedent technique commonly used in Chinese character input. In addition, the order of the candidate list may be dynamically adjusted, typically according to the frequency of actual Chinese characters or phrases input by the user.

In step 109, the corresponding chinese character can be retrieved as long as the code portions match. It should be understood that in some encoding schemes, a full match may be required to retrieve a Chinese character. For example, in the case of double-pinyin codes, a single chinese character can generally be retrieved by simply entering two keys, and thus the user may be required to enter all the codes of the chinese characters.

Next, at step 110, the input Ki of the keypad continues to be received. As in the case of the first word input in step 105, the user inputs a plurality of codes of the second word in order to reduce the duplication code. The number of input codes is determined by the coding mode and the requirements of users. Of course, if the entered phrase has been retrieved, the user may enter a confirmation key at this point.

At step 111, if it is determined whether Ki is a phrase confirmation key, if so, the flow proceeds to step 112. At step 112, the user-confirmed phrase is entered.

If the judgment result in the step 111 is no, the step 108 is returned, and the code corresponding to Ki is added into the second coding sequence so as to accurately search the phrase.

In the above embodiment, the stroke codes are coincident codes and the matching of phrases is partial matching, so that a plurality of phrases are matched with the input code sequence, and a candidate list needs to be displayed for the user to select and confirm. It should be appreciated that in the case where the chinese character code does not have coincident codes or the entered code sequence uniquely matches a phrase, then the steps of displaying the candidate list and user confirmation are not required. And directly inputting the uniquely matched phrases into the electronic equipment after the uniquely matched phrases are retrieved.

The above description only describes a method for inputting a two-word phrase, and the input of more than two-word phrases can be performed in the following manner: the input from the second region is received followed by a new input from the first region, the new input being the encoded sequence of the third word of the phrase. Phrases are retrieved based on the coded sequence of the three words. Thus, by using two fields in turn, to distinguish the input of the coded sequence of a plurality of words, the corresponding phrase can be conveniently retrieved without inputting any "separator".

Another possibility is to receive a new input from the first field after receiving the input of the second field, which new input is added to the first code sequence as a code of the first word. The first word can be more accurately matched based on the new first encoding sequence, thereby more accurately retrieving the two-word phrase. The above method is particularly useful in situations where the encoding of the second word has been completed and the desired input phrase has not yet appeared. In the event that multiple matches occur after entry of a partial code of the first word and a partial code of the second word, the user will typically continue to enter the code of the second word until the phrase desired to be entered appears in the candidate list. However, when the second word encoding has been entered and the desired phrase has not yet appeared in the candidate list, the user may wish to add a word encoding instead of re-entering the phrase. The above method can be adopted at this time.

The above method can only directly input two-character phrases. Phrases with more than two words can be implemented by phrase association. For example, the user wishes to enter the three-word phrase "republic". According to the method, the user can only directly input the two-word phrase 'common sum'. When the user enters "union," a phrase association list may be presented. Multi-word phrases starting with "republic," i.e., "republic," "co-party," and so on, are given in this list.

In addition, the invention can also be used on a Qwerty keyboard. As shown in FIG. 3, Q/W/E/A/S of the left hand area of the Qwerty keyboard can be set as the first area, and I/O/P/K/L of the right hand area can be set as the second area, corresponding to five basic strokes respectively. Alternatively, the letter portion of the standard keyboard is used as the first zone and the number zone of the keypad is used as the second zone.

In addition, the invention can also adopt the mode that two areas adopt different codes to input. For example, the user enters strokes in the first region and pinyin in the second region. Alternatively, the first region uses five strokes input and the second region uses eight strokes input.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of a Chinese phrase input device in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention. The Chinese phrase input device 400 may be any electronic device capable of inputting Chinese phrases, such as a personal computer, mobile phone, PDA, or the like. The Chinese phrase input apparatus 400 has an input device 410, a phrase input device 420, and a phrase library 430. In addition, a display device 440 and a word frequency adjusting device 450 may be further included.

The input device 410 may be a Qwerty keyboard, an ITU-T numeric keypad employed by a telephone, and a virtual keyboard displayed on a computer screen in cooperation with a touch screen, a mouse, a scroll wheel, and other pointing devices. The input device 410 is divided into a first area 411 and a second area 412, each of which can input a chinese character code.

When receiving the chinese character codes inputted from the input device 410, the phrase input device 420 combines the codes inputted from the first region 411 of the input device 410 into a first code sequence and combines the codes inputted from the second region 412 into a second code sequence. The phrase input device 420 retrieves phrases from the phrase library 430 that have a first word that matches a first encoded sequence and a second word that matches a second encoded sequence.

When the phrase input device 420 retrieves a plurality of matching phrases, they are sent to the display device 440. The display device 440 displays a list of matching phrases for further selection by the user.

The word frequency adjusting device 450 can dynamically adjust the frequency of use of each phrase in the candidate phrase library 430 according to the frequency of the actual Chinese characters or phrases input by the user. When a plurality of phrases are matched with the input first coded sequence and second coded sequence, the phrases with high frequency of use are firstly present in the candidate list.

According to one embodiment of the present invention, the input device 410 is an ITU-T keyboard and the first field 411 is the 1/2/3/4/5 keys mapping the horizontal, vertical, left-falling, right-falling, and 5 basic strokes of the Chinese character stroke code, respectively. The second area 412 is 7/8/9/0 keys, which respectively map the 5 basic strokes of horizontal, vertical, left-falling, right-falling and turning in the Chinese character stroke code.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, the input device 410 is a Qwerty keyboard, and the first region 411 is located in a left-hand region of the keyboard and the second region 412 is located in a right-hand region of the keyboard.

The invention provides a method for inputting Chinese phrases without inputting separators, which reduces the times of pressing keys. Especially when inputting multi-word phrases, the input efficiency is significantly improved. Generally, the rate of repetition of multi-word phrases is low, and the entire phrase generally needs to be retrieved by entering only one code for each word. Take the phrase "personal computer" as an example where the user enters the phrase using a stroke input method. If the separator needs to be input, nine keys of 3-0-3-0-4-0-3-0-1 need to be pressed. With 5 strokes and 4 separators. The method of the invention only needs to press five keys of 3-9-4-9-1, thus obviously improving the input efficiency. And the input method of the invention has simple and intuitive logic and can be easily learned by users.

While the foregoing has been with reference to particular embodiments of the invention, it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that these are merely illustrative and that changes in these embodiments may be made without departing from the principles of the invention, the scope of which is defined by the appended claims.

Claims (19)

1. A method of inputting a chinese phrase in an electronic device having an input device divided into a first region and a second region, the method comprising the steps of:

inputting a first code sequence of Chinese characters in a first area of the input device;

inputting a second code sequence of the Chinese characters in a second area of the input device;

retrieving phrases having a first word matching the first code sequence and a second word matching the second code sequence;

inputting the retrieved phrase;

the first coding sequence and the second coding sequence are coding sequences formed according to different Chinese character coding modes;

wherein the first and second regions are dynamically defined for a first sequence of word strokes defining in which region the phrase is input; and

wherein said first region is defined as the region in which the first numeric keyboard input is located.

2. The method of inputting chinese phrases of claim 1 wherein said different chinese character codes are two of stroke, pinyin, zhuyin, shuangpin, wubi, character codes.

3. The method of inputting chinese phrases of claim 1 wherein when a plurality of phrases are retrieved that match the input encoding sequence, a list of candidate phrases is displayed for user selection.

4. The method of inputting chinese phrases of claim 3 wherein said list of candidate phrases is ranked according to frequency of use and ranking order is dynamically adjustable.

5. The method of inputting a chinese phrase of claim 1 wherein the first word partially matches the first encoded sequence and the second word partially matches the second encoded sequence.

6. The method of inputting chinese phrases as claimed in claim 1, wherein when a new chinese character code is inputted in said first region after a chinese character code is inputted in said second region, the newly inputted chinese character code is used as a third code sequence; and retrieving phrases based on the coded sequence of the three words.

7. The method of inputting chinese phrases as claimed in claim 1, wherein when a new chinese character code is input in said first region after a chinese character code is input in said second region, the new chinese character code is added to the original first code sequence to make the matching of the first character in the phrase more accurate.

8. The method of inputting chinese phrases of claim 1 wherein said input device is an ITU-T keyboard and said first field is the 1/2/3/4/5 keys mapping the horizontal, vertical, left-falling, right-falling and 5-fold basic strokes respectively in the chinese stroke code; and the second area is 7/8/9/0 key, which respectively maps 5 basic strokes of horizontal stroke, vertical stroke, left falling stroke, right falling stroke and turning stroke in the Chinese character stroke code.

9. The method of inputting chinese phrases of claim 1 wherein said input device is a Qwerty keyboard, said first region being located in a left hand region of the keyboard and said second region being located in a right hand region of the keyboard.

10. An apparatus for inputting chinese phrases, comprising:

the input device is divided into a first area and a second area and is used for respectively inputting Chinese character codes;

the phrase library is used for storing a plurality of Chinese phrases;

phrase input means for composing a code input from the first region into a first code sequence and a code input from the second region into a second code sequence; searching phrases with a first character matched with the first coding sequence and a second character matched with the second coding sequence from the phrase library and inputting the searched phrases;

the first coding sequence and the second coding sequence are coding sequences formed according to different Chinese character coding modes;

wherein the first and second regions are dynamically defined for a first sequence of word strokes defining in which region the phrase is input; and

wherein said first region is defined as the region in which the first numeric keyboard input is located.

11. The apparatus for inputting chinese phrases of claim 10 wherein said different chinese character codes are two of stroke, pinyin, zhuyin, shuangpin, wubi, character codes.

12. The apparatus for inputting chinese phrases as claimed in claim 10, further comprising display means for displaying a list of candidate phrases on the display means for user selection when the phrase input means retrieves a plurality of phrases matching the inputted code sequence.

13. The apparatus for inputting chinese phrases of claim 12 wherein said list of candidate phrases is ranked by frequency of use; the equipment for inputting Chinese phrases further comprises a word frequency adjusting device which is used for dynamically adjusting the using frequency of each phrase in the phrase database according to the frequency of the Chinese characters or phrases actually input by the user.

14. The apparatus for inputting chinese phrases of claim 10 wherein said phrase input device retrieves phrases having a first word partially matching said first encoded sequence and a second word partially matching said second encoded sequence.

15. The apparatus for inputting chinese phrases as claimed in claim 10, wherein when a new chinese character code is inputted in said first region after the chinese character code is inputted in said second region, the newly inputted chinese character code is taken as a third code sequence; and the phrase input means retrieves phrases according to the three coded sequences.

16. The apparatus for inputting chinese phrases of claim 10 wherein when a new chinese character code is input in said first region after a chinese character code is input in said second region, the newly input chinese character code is added to the original first code sequence to make the matching of the first character in the phrase more accurate.

17. The apparatus for inputting chinese phrases of claim 10 wherein said input device is an ITU-T keyboard and said first field is the 1/2/3/4/5 keys mapping the horizontal, vertical, left-falling, right-falling and 5-fold basic strokes respectively in the chinese character stroke code; and the second area is 7/8/9/0 key, which respectively maps 5 basic strokes of horizontal stroke, vertical stroke, left falling stroke, right falling stroke and turning stroke in the Chinese character stroke code.

18. The apparatus for inputting chinese phrases of claim 10 wherein said input device is a Qwerty keyboard, said first region being located in a left hand region of the keyboard and said second region being located in a right hand region of the keyboard.

19. An apparatus for inputting chinese phrases into an electronic device having an input device divided into a first region and a second region, the apparatus comprising:

means for inputting a first code sequence of Chinese characters in a first region of the input device;

means for inputting a second code sequence of Chinese characters in a second region of the input device;

means for retrieving phrases having a first word matching the first code sequence and a second word matching the second code sequence;

a component that inputs the retrieved phrase;

the first coding sequence and the second coding sequence are coding sequences formed according to different Chinese character coding modes;

wherein the first and second regions are dynamically defined for a first sequence of word strokes defining in which region the phrase is input; and

wherein said first region is defined as the region in which the first numeric keyboard input is located.