Chewing

Original author(s)	Chewing core team
Developer(s)	Chewing core team
Stable release	0.3.2 / 2008-12-01; 12 months ago
Written in	C
Operating system	Unix-like, Windows, MacOS
Available in	Chinese
Development status	Active
Type	input method
License	GNU Lesser General Public License
Website	Chewing project website

The Chewing (酷音) input method is an intelligent Zhuyin input method. 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 ^[1]. Their research result (the program) is published under the GPL.

Chewing core team extends their work and actively maintain the project.

Contents 1 Motivation 2 Goals 3 Supported Systems 4 References

[edit] Motivation

Chewing was inspired by several other propriety intelligent Zhuyin input methods under Microsoft Windows, 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 Traditional Chinese computer users, an intelligent Zhuyin method is a necessity for Unix-like systems in order to attract more users. There was a similar input method, bimsphone (詞音), which was bundled in XCIN. However, it does not have convenient API for further development.

Original chewing (the one developed by Gong and Chen) is no longer maintained, only works with XIM , nor does it have generic API for input frameworks^[2]. Jim Huang, et al. form the Chewing core team and extend Gong and Chen's work. Thus the chewing core team renames the project as "new" chewing (新酷音) to differentiate from the original one. Nevertheless, its English name is still "chewing".

[edit] Goals

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

[edit] Supported Systems

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

• ibus-chewing for IBus.
• iiimf-chewing for IIIMF.
• scim-chewing for SCIM.

There are also chewing input method for Windows (win32-chewing) and MacOS (SpaceChewing via OpenVanilla).

[edit] References