The Chewing (酷音) input method is an intelligent Zhuyin

input method An input method (or input method editor, commonly abbreviated IME) is an operating system component or program that enables users to generate characters not natively available on their input devices by using sequences of characters (or mouse oper ...

. It is one of the most popular input methods among Traditional Chinese Unix users. Chewing was a project established by Lu-Chuan Kung (龔律全) and Jeremy Kang-Pen Chen (陳康本), sponsored by Tsan-sheng Hsu (徐讚昇) from

Academia Sinica Academia Sinica (AS, ; zh, t=中央研究院) is the national academy of the Taiwan, Republic of China. It is headquartered in Nangang District, Taipei, Nangang, Taipei. Founded in Nanjing, the academy supports research activities in mathemat ...

. Their research result (the program) was published under the GPL. The Chewing core team extended their work and actively maintains the project.

Motivation

Chewing was inspired by other proprietary intelligent Zhuyin input methods under

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

, namely, Wang-Xin (忘形) by Eten, Microsoft New Zhuyin (微軟新注音), and Nature Zhuyin (自然注音). Since Zhuyin-based input methods are the most popular among computer users who read and write Traditional Chinese, an intelligent Zhuyin method is a necessity for Unix-like systems in order to attract more users. There was a similar input method, (詞音), which was bundled in XCIN. However, it does not have a convenient

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

for further development. The original chewing (as developed by Kung and Chen) is no longer maintained, only works with XIM, and doesn't have a generic API for input frameworks. Jim Huang, et al. formed the Chewing core team and extended Gong and Chen's work. Thus the chewing core team renamed the project as "new" chewing (新酷音) to differentiate their work from the original. Nevertheless, the English name has remained "chewing".

Goals

* Split logic and view. * Support multiple operating systems, and input framework. * Provide a universal API for input framework and further development.

Supported Systems

Chewing has been adopted by various input frameworks in Unix-like systems. On these systems, the chewing package is usually split into two parts: ''libchewing'', which handles the actual character selection logic; and ''input framework interface'' for display and preference setting. For examples: * ibus-chewing for

IBus The principal factors that characterize beer are bitterness, the variety of flavours present in the beverage and their intensity, ethanol, alcohol content, and colour. Standards for those characteristics allow a more objective and uniform determ ...

. * fcitx-chewing for

Fcitx Fcitx (, ) stands for Flexible Context-aware Input Tool with eXtension support, is an input method framework with extension support for the X Window System that supports multiple input method engines including Pinyin transcription, table-based in ...

* iiimf-chewing for

IIIMF IIIMF (Internet/Intranet Input Method Framework) is the default input method framework for Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese and Korean on old Fedora Linux systems. Since Fedora Core 5, '' SCIM'' has been selected as the default input ...

. * scim-chewing for SCIM. * uim-chewing for uim.uim has a chewing module available separately.
/ref> There are also chewing input method for Windows (win32-chewing) and Mac OS (SpaceChewing via OpenVanilla).

References

{{reflist CJK input methods