Apple Chinese Language Kit - Manual (Page 9)

9
C H A P T E R
1
1
About the Chinese Language Kit
What Is the Chinese Language Kit?
The Chinese Language Kit provides software that allows you to enter Chinese characters on
your Mac OS computer. You can use Chinese characters for the names of files and folders in
the Finder and as text in documents you create in your application programs.
Most computer keyboards are designed to type one-byte Roman characters. The Chinese
Language Kit software adapts your Roman-based keyboard so you can enter two-byte
Chinese characters on your computer. This software is called an
input method, which is
based on Apple’s WorldScript technology. (For more information about this technology, see
“What Are Scripts?” on page 14 of this chapter.)
The Chinese Language Kit provides two input methods for the two Chinese writing systems:
Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. Each system uses many characters, and while the
characters in each system are related, they are different.
Both the Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese input methods provide several
input
m odes for entering characters. There are three types of input modes based on the way
characters are written, the way characters sound, and numeric codes for each character.
The next two sections provide general information about the writing-based and sound-based
input modes. See Chapter 3 for instructions on how to use the Traditional Chinese Input
Method and its input modes. See Chapter 4 for instructions on how to use the Simplified
Chinese Input Method and its input modes.