How to type Chinese on a Mac

Having lived in North America for more than 16 years, it becomes harder and harder for me to recall and write Chinese characters. Some input methods become quite unusable for me, such as Changjie (倉頡), Array (行列), and all those that require you to recall how the character looks like, and dissect it according to their radicals (部首). Similarly, hand writing pads (手寫版) do not work either, since I don’t even remember how to the character looks like. Therefore the most direct way is to go by Cantonese Pinyin (廣東話拼音), since that’s the only thing I can retain.

So for those Mac users out there, this is how you do it:

1. Download Open Vanilla from http://www.openvanilla.org/
2. Follow the installation instructions here.
3. Download this data file canton.cin and put it under /Library/OpenVanilla/0.8/Modules/OVIMGeneric
4. Activate the new Canton module in OpenVanilla preferences under the “Load list and shortcuts” tab. (You can also turn off all the other input methods you have no use for. It makes the program less cluttered.)
5. Optional, but very useful: To get associated phrases (聯想詞功能), go to lukhnos’ page and download the zip file.

The good thing about using OpenVanilla (instead of writing your own CIN or Apple IM plugin text files) is that it allows you to adjust the font size and the color of the character selction bar. It makes a night and day difference when the Chinese characters are in size 24 instead of 10. If you want to add new characters, modify pinyins, or adjust the character position in the selection bar, you can just open up canton.cin in a Unicode text editor like TextWrangler (my favorite!) and edit it yourself. It should be pretty self explanatory, but if you want the data file’s formatting documentation, read this.

Happy typing Chinese!