Chinese script?

[mr. piper]

can anyone tell me how chinese characters, hundreds as there are, fit on a keyboard? It can't poss be like a   QWERTY? can it?

[ursula62]

Hi mr. piper

These days countries with different script characters than western Europe use either an on screen virtual keyboard (and click the keys with the mouse) or an input method editor (IME), which enables you to create  a Chinese or Japanese character (for example) on screen by pressing a sequence of two or more keys.  Multi language versions of Windows operating systems are available with IMEs for most languages these days.

 

Before computers? There used to be a shop in Chinatown in London that had a Chinese typewriter in the window - it was the office of a Chinese language newspaper. The typewriter was about the size of half an office desk and had a grid on it with a sliding ball on top. You moved the ball over the character and then pushed down and the character printed on the paper.