With this scheme, the typing rules are much easier to remember. The first TAP will decide which section it is and the second TAP will decide which block it is. To make it easier to learn, we use two taps for each block. In the Wubi input, there need to be 25 blocks in total. The scheme is much easier to remember than the keyboard typing. Since the Wubi input has nothing to do with the key meanings of the keyboard, why should we even bother using the keyboard? We can just find the combinations for the TAP device to locate all the five blocks and five sections. So the users need to remember all the combination of the sections and blocks to start using the Wubi input which means the learning curve is very steep. Take key G as an example, it is the horizontal stroke section and horizontal stroke block, which has no connection to the meaning of G at all. As you can see, this is the stroke mapping for Wubi input method is a hard mapping to the keyboard and the user has to memorize the whole mapping to even start typing. Memorization and practice are key factors for proficient usage. Prototype PurposeĪ major drawback to learning Wubi is its steeper learning curve since as a more complex system it takes longer to acquire as a skill. So it can be extremely fast and accurate at the same time. But for Wubi, this encoding system has an extremely low duplication rate compared with Pinyin input. However, the problem with Pinyin input is that for one single pronunciation there could be several characters, which means that the character for one specific pronunciation is not unique.

The reason behind the popularity for it is people learn Pinyin since they are very young and it is just very simple to learn. The five sections are the horizontal stroke section(一), vertical stroke section(丨), left-falling stroke section(丿), right-falling stroke section(乀), and turning stroke section(乛), A Chinese character can be decomposed into one or more combinations of strokes so that the user can type the strokes on the keyboard and combine them to input Chinese characters.įor now, the most popular input system for Mandarin Chinese is Pinyin input which is based on the pronunciation of Chinese characters. In Chinese Wubi input system, all the Chinese characters are classified into 5 sections and each section has 5 blocks. Wubi 86 is the most widely known and used shape-based Input Method for full letter keyboards in Mainland China.

Wubi keyboard