Lesson 1: Introduction to Viewing and Typing

Use your PC to Master Japanese and Chinese

Lesson 1: Introduction to Viewing and Typing

Retrieving the First Lesson

Although Windows emphasizes the ease of using the mouse to activate menus and dialog boxes, it is frequently faster and more convenient to keep your hands on the keyboard, using it to activate functions instead of reaching for the mouse. Try practicing navigation using the keyboard, then go back and do the same functions using the mouse, until you are skilled in both methods.

Begin in a known state by using Window | Close All to close all the open document windows, then minimize the permanent windows.

Open the first lesson file, called Lesson1.ch0. You may notice Lesson1 on the quick pick list of recently closed files at the bottom of the File menu. For the tutorial, use File | Open anyway:

Select File | Open to invoke the Open Document dialog box.

We could just type (or paste) the full path name c:\sc\chi\lesson1.ch0 and press Enter, but let's instead use the navigation capability of the Open Document dialog:

Press Alt+t (underlined in "Type") to move the focus to the List Files of Type control, then press the Alt+Down arrow key to drop the list of file types. Press Down repeatedly to scroll the list until you see Chinese.
Press Shift+Tab to move backwards through the active controls on the dialog box (Tab moves forwards). Stop when the current directory is highlighted in the display under Directories. Press Up to highlight the Sc directory, then press Enter to activate the OK button. Selecting a directory then OK changes to that directory. Note that the current directory, listed under the Directories label, reads c:\sc (if Smart Characters is installed on the "c" drive). Do the same for the Chinese examples directory chi.
Observe the list of files in the list box on the left. To get to the list, we first press Alt+n to get to the File Name control, then Tab to move into the list. Once in the list, the Up and Down arrows scroll the list to reveal Lesson1.ch0. Highlight the entry by pressing Down then press Enter activate the OK button, which tells Windows that you want to open the indicated file. Smart Characters complies and displays the file in a new document window.

Adjusting the Display and Zoom

Press Ctrl+PageUp to scroll the window to the top of the file and position the insertion point at the beginning (Ctrl+PageDn goes to the end).
Press Alt+Minus to drop the child system menu, then x to make the window fill the Smart Characters frame window. You could also click the maximize button, or double click the title bar.

Note the indicators of a maximized child window: the file name is appended to the main frame window title, the child system menu button moves to the left of the menu, and the child restore button moves to the right.

Click the window maximize button to maximize the window. Select View | Page Layout to display top and bottom margins, headers, footers, and footnotes.
Select View | Zoom | Fit Page to display the entire page in tiny type, then View | Zoom | Page Width to zoom the display to fit in the window, showing the left and right margins, then finally View | Zoom | Margin Width to zoom the display to the page margins.

For users with regular VGA screens (e.g., laptops), View Normal is the most convenient way to work. Those with super VGA screens may find it agreeable to work in other views and zooms. For the sake of the tutorial, leave the display in View Normal and the zoom at Margin Width or Page Width.

Select View | Normal (press Alt+v, then n) to display the page at the current zoom setting without top and bottom margins, headers, footers, or footnotes.
Select View | Zoom | Margin Width to switch to normal view, and zoom the margins to fit in the window horizontally. If the display is too large, use View | Zoom | Page Width or another fixed zoom setting instead (133% works well with the customary 12 point type).

Set the Annotations Display

If you are a fluent speaker, please bear with us, and consider the benefit to less experienced users of the Smart Characters annotations which allow them to read your language, and remember, after these tutorials, you can turn these annotations off for good with the click of a button.

Select View to drop the View menu. Verify that Annotations is checked, meaning that Smart Characters will display and print text annotated according to the annotation preferences. Press Esc twice to cancel the menu display, and unhighlight the menu bar. Scroll the document to display some Chinese text.
Click the Annotations Expert/Novice button on the toolbar, a face wearing either a flat scholar's mortarboard (annotations off for experts) or a pointed dunce cap (annotations on). Notice the three types of annotations: variable word spacing(4- 14), pinyin or bopomofo pronunciations, and English glosses. Also notice that the line spacing and character spacing changes to accommodate the annotations. Leave the annotations on.

Scroll through the Document

Scroll through the document using Page Up and Page Down.

Notice the display of pronunciations (tiny pinyin or bopomofo characters) above each Chinese character, and the embedded display of English glosses (short translations called notes). In Margin Width zoom, these notes continue past the right margin on a VGA screen, making the line length somewhat too long for the window, so practice scrolling horizontally. Of course, you could click the scroll bars on the window bottom and right, but instead, practice using the keyboard:

Set the zoom setting to 133%. If you are using a VGA screen, note that the lines are not fully displayed. If you are using a Super VGA system, reduce the document window size so that an entire line does not fully display (for horizontal scrolling practice).
Press Scroll Lock, then press the Right and Left arrow keys to scroll horizontally. Press the Up and Down arrow keys to scroll vertically one line.

Note that the line with the insertion point scrolls independently of the rest of the window. This allows you to work on the current line without scrolling the entire window.

Press End to move a window full to the right, and finally, Home to set the left window edge to the page left edge. Leave the window in the Home position. Press Scroll Lock again to turn it off.

Scroll the Current Line

Notice that the window shows only a part of each horizontal line. It is frequently useful to work on a document using a small window that shows only a portion of the line. Here's how to scroll the window as you work:

Use the mouse or the arrow keys to move the insertion point to a full line, then press the End key. Observe that the current line(D- - 2) (the line with the insertion point) scrolls to the left, and the insertion point moves to the end of the line.
Select View | Redraw Window, click the Redraw Window button (the button with a box around a yellow circle), press F9, or press the Right Mouse button to display the speed menu, and select Redraw Window. Note that the window scrolls to match the current line.
Press the Home key, and observe that the line scrolls to the right, and that the insertion point moves to the beginning of the line, which is now at the window edge. Select Redraw Window to align the rest of the window (which now exactly matches the margins).

Annotations Off

If you are a fluent speaker, consider how to annotate your documents so that the least skilled in your office can cut, paste, and substitute text for everyday correspondence with native Chinese.

Click the scholar/student (or expert/novice) button turn annotations off (or select View | Annotations). Note the changes: the word wrap changes to reflect the removal of the variable word and character space, and the line height changes as the pronunciations and glosses no longer occupy space.

Text displays in this style when importing from another word processor (fortunately, you can add annotations to existing text). Also, you would set the display like this intentionally to prepare for printing or faxing to a native speaker, or for use by a native speaker, who might be confused or annoyed by the annotations!

Try to read the text without annotations. This is the view fluent users will select to work in, and, one day, you will too.

Even though the annotations are not visible, they are still present. For example, the variable word spacing allows you to select a word by double clicking the mouse. Try it:

Double click with the mouse on portions of the text, and observe the highlighting. Observe the hidden characters window, and the choice of word boundaries. You can insert a word separator wherever you want by pressing the SpaceBar.

(If you cannot double click, consider increasing the double click time using Program Manager | Main | Control Panel | Mouse | Double Click Speed.)

It is not necessary to turn everything off at once; each annotation has its own set of formatting controls. To experiment, first turn the annotations back on:

Use any method to turn annotations back on.

Notes Display Off

Notes interfere with our appreciation of Chinese, so turn them off:

Select Format | Annotations and note the choices for Notes Placement: Off, Inline, Right, Above, and Below. Set it to Off, then select OK. Observe the display with just pinyin (or bopomofo) and word spacing.

Pronunciation Display Off

Turn off the pronunciation display:

Set Format | Annotations | Pronunciation to Off. While we're in the Annotations Format dialog, set Horizontal Spacing | Pts Word to a more obvious value of 5 points. Select OK.

If you tried to read the text according to the above example, you now have some familiarity with it, and may even be able to read it, depending on your proficiency. The point is that word spacing alone is a speed up for advanced language students.

Word Spacing Off, Pronunciation On

Set Format | Annotations | Pts Word to 0 to turn off word spacing, and set Pronunciation (pinyin or bopomofo) to Below. Try to pronounce and read the text without the notes, and without reading the pronunciations. Train yourself to ignore them and focus on the characters. If you have difficulties focusing on the characters, you can reduce the distracting effect of the pronunciations by reducing their size to be nearly illegible.
Reset the Format | Annotations dialog so that Pts Word is 4, and that Notes are set to Above.

Probing the Hidden Characters

Use any method to turn annotations Off again to make for a more dramatic example. Observe Chinese as would be displayed by a native Chinese word processor.

Look at the text. Nervous? Relax. We don't need in-text pronunciations to decipher the pronunciation of a Chinese character, just probe the character with the insertion point, and let the hidden characters(5- 4) window show you its secrets.

Press Up or Down to get to the line 12 or 13 (the line with the Chinese text).

The status bar indicates the line number if you were working in Line mode, but you may be working in Page mode which displays pages and x, y positions. If so, set View | Display | Status Indicators to Line. Note that the indicators on the status bar change from Pages and x, y Inches to Lines and Columns.

Use the Arrow Keys to move the insertion point to a Chinese character until it becomes visible in the hidden characters window. Press Alt+Left (press and hold an Alt key, press Left, then release the Alt key) to reveal the character's pronunciation. Note that both pinyin (and bopomofo if you are displaying bopomofo) are visible, and that both the hidden characters window title bar and the object type indicator on the status bar at the bottom of the main frame window show Pinyin (or Bpmf).
Press Home to get to beginning of line 12. Notice that the status bar(5- 2) on the bottom of the main frame window displays in part:

... 12L 10c 0p 556b English - ^D - 4 ! Pinyin>>Pinyin

Every Smart Characters line starts out as English. Ctrl+D (^D) is the first (Position) character on the line, which is in column 10 (Column). The input mode is set to Pinyin >> Pinyin or (Pinyin >> Bpmf).

Press Alt+Right to move the insertion point object by object, and note the displays in the hidden characters window and on the status bar.

Adjusting Character Space

Because pronunciation widths exceed that of the corresponding Chinese characters, additional fixed or variable character space must be added to align the pronunciations with the characters.

Use Format | Annotations to set variable character spacing (Horizontal Spacing Pts Char) of 4 and 8 points, then toggle annotations on and off. Note that the variable spacing depends upon the annotations. The character spacing in unannotated text is set by the character formatting controls.

Fixed vs. Variable Character Space

A fair amount of User's Group materials were created using Smart Characters for Students, which did not support variable character spacing. Instead, spacing for annotations used fixed character spacing. Try the version 2.9 fixed style:

Use Format | Annotations to set variable character spacing to 0 points.
Position the insertion point at the beginning of a Chinese sentence, then select Format | Character to invoke the Character Format dialog. This dialog is really three dialogs in one, controlled by the Font Group selection. Use the Arrow keys or click the radio button to set Font Group to Chinese Characters.
Check or set Chinese character Spacing to 6 points of spacing after each Chinese character, then toggle annotations on and off and note that the characters appear far too widely spaced with pronunciations off. Return the fixed space to 2 points.

Observe that the notes size is only 4 points for a quite small notes display.

Pinyin to Bopomofo

Take a look at the document using bopomofo instead of pinyin pronunciations:

Turn Annotations on, then select Format | Annotations and set Roman Style to Bpmf. Bopomofo has only one style of tone display: tone symbols at placed the end of each syllable. First tone is not marked, and the fifth tone is marked with a dot.

Note the message The active Chinese alphabetic input mode conflicts with the Chinese pronunciation annotation format. This message means that even though you can now type in pinyin, and the keyboard will translate pinyin to pinyin (to take advantage of the keyboard macros and dynamic glossary(4- 6)), the display will convert the pinyin back to bopomofo.

Select Ignore to ignore this message. Because we just came from Format Annotations, you would generally select the Keyboard Setup dialog, and enable bopomofo input mode. Don't do that now.

If you want to use bopomofo, you can use Keyboard | Setup | Bpmf | Exclusive to do so. Before doing this, it is best to start with a Chinese project that uses bopomofo, and leave any pinyin-based projects using pinyin. Otherwise, other users may wonder why a pinyin-based project uses bopomofo.

Other Pinyin Displays

You can display pinyin in a variety of styles:

Select Format | Annotations | Roman Style and note the selections:

As Is displays pronunciations as they are in the file according to the active keyboard and installed fonts (if any). Bopomofo stays as bopomofo, pinyin as pinyin.
Vowel marks the first pinyin vowel in the last portion of a syllable with a tone accent mark. The fifth tone is not marked.
^/_\. displays tone symbols after each pinyin syllable.
12345 displays tone numbers after each pinyin syllable.
Off suppresses pinyin tone display.
Bpmf converts pinyin to bopomofo.

With Annotations on, select each of these in turn and redraw the window to examine the result. Leave the Roman Style set to Vowel.

Smart Characters converts pronunciations as they are displayed or printed.

Adding and Deleting Lines

Make a few blank lines for typing. The Enter key breaks a line into two lines. The Delete key deletes a blank line. Practice adding and deleting lines above the line (11) with the sample typing text:

Move the insertion point to the line above the example Chinese text.
Press Enter twice to add two lines and make some space.
Press Up to move up one line.
Press Delete to delete the blank line, then Up to move to the first new blank line.

Entering Chinese Characters

Begin Chinese text entry by writing the simple wo3 shi4 mei3 guo2 ren2

or I am an American. The numbers are tones, which specify a particular vocal pitch and modulation.

Press F12 or the Side + - to select Pinyin >> Pinyin input mode. Note that the insertion point displays pin, and the input mode indicator displays Pinyin >> Pinyin (the conversion step activates the dynamic glossary(4- 6).

If you cannot access pinyin this way, your workspace is not set up. Turn to Set up the Workspace and do so now, then repeat the previous step.

Select Window | 5 and adjust the list(4- 4) window so that you can see it alongside the document. If you have no extra space on your screen, you can overlap the document window and the list window.
Make sure that Caps Lock is off, and press w-o-3 to enter the Chinese word for I and me. Smart Characters alphabetic text entry is case sensitive. Upper case is generally reserved for dynamic glossary keys.
Select Translate | Lookup Syllable to search the syllable dictionary. Note and remember the keyboard shortcut for this dictionary function: LeftShift+Space.

Note that the list window title bar has become active and reads Paste into Document, and is displaying a list of Chinese characters with the desired sound. Locate and select the desired character (the first and only one):

Highlight the character, then press Enter to select it. Notice that the character is now inserted into the text at the insertion point location, and that the current object type is now Bchars (short for binary Characters) or Pinyin.

This example has one matching entry. If no entries match, the list window displays Target not Found, and the window activation does not change.

Adjust Character Spacing

Wo is short. If the pronunciation were longer (e.g., chang), it would overlap the character. If character spacing is set to a small amount, the pronunciations will not line up with the characters.

Select Format | Annotations to set the Horizontal Spacing Pts Char to 6 points for a reasonable trade off between compactness and alignment.

You Can Guess the Tone

You don't have to know the tone to enter words or syllables. Pretend you don't know the tone for shi4 meaning is or am:

Type s-h-i-1 (any tone from 1-5 will do) and select Translate | Lookup Similar Syll. and note the shortcut key RightShift+Space. Note the listing of syllables with various tones, starting with sh (the `i' in "shi" doesn't add to the pronunciation, and is there only to make roman alphabet users feel better).

Because most syllables have not just an initial but also a middle and a final portion, the list of similar syllables is much shorter, and lookup using that method is fairly quick. However, some syllables (e.g., zi and others ending in `i') have only an initial portion, which makes partial match lists lengthy.

List Window Scrolling

Press Esc to reactivate the main document window, press BackSpace to delete the 1st tone marking typed in the previous step, then press 4 to add the correct tone. Press LeftShift+Space to get a much shorter syllable dictionary listing. Do not make a selection yet.
Press PageUp and PageDn, and use the Arrow keys to move the selection. Try Ctrl+PageDn and Ctrl+PageUp to scroll to the beginning and end.
Press Esc several times to alternate activation between the list and the main document window. With the main window activated, use Alt+Up and Alt+Down, Alt+PageUp, etc., to scroll the selection in the list window, and Alt+Enter to paste the correct selection (the first).

Alt+Left and Right move the insertion point within a text object to display and edit pronunciations and glosses. The other Alt + direction keys scroll or move the selection in the list window.

Word Lookup

To save time and effort, use the syllable dictionary only when entries are not found in the word and phrase dictionary. By default, the word and phrase dictionary matches any tones, however, some tone must be typed after each syllable in a word to separate the syllables. In this example, type the tones as would be found in the dictionary (but not as spoken):

Enter mei3guo2ren2 then select Translate | Lookup Word or Phrase (note the shortcut key F2) to use the word and phrase dictionary to get the three Chinese characters meaning American (person). For words, the word and phrase dictionary is far faster than using the syllable dictionary.
Finish up: press the Period key.
Press Side Plus or F12 until the input mode indicator displays notes. Position the insertion point before each of the first two characters, and type the two missing glosses I and am. Note the added word spacing that comes from inserting a notes object, which also acts like a word separator.
Press F10, click the toolbar button, or select Redraw Line from the speed menu to redraw the line and clean up the pinyin pronunciations.

A note on tones: the tone in the dictionaries is that of the underlying syllable, not the spoken tone. To lookup an exact match, type the pronunciation, then press F8 before selecting Translate | Lookup Word or Phrase.

Dynamic Glossaries Are Fastest

To save time and effort, do not use the dictionaries for frequently entered words and phrases. Instead, register the words, phrases, and sentences you use most frequently in your dynamic glossary(4- 6) (window 3) for instant retrieval by typing a short abbreviation. Try a few of the example entries:

Press the Right Mouse button and select Pinyin input mode, then type "Hupy" to yield (Hanyu Pinyin). The keys are case sensitive to avoid conflicts with valid pinyin syllables. Try Bpmf (bopomofo), SM (small), Lar (large), and Acs ( Apropos Customer Service(F- - 1)). Note that dynamic glossary entries are not limited to Chinese, but the input mode must be pinyin to use the pinyin dynamic glossary. Other input modes can have their own glossaries, or they can all use one common glossary.
Type sc to yield . This entry is not in your dynamic glossary, but is rather part of the pinyin keyboard, which can be global to your group or company (e.g., on a network, for commonly-used company wide terminology).

Checking and Saving Your Work

Before saving your new document, redraw the window and check your work:

Press the Right Mouse button to display the word processing speed menu. Select Redraw Window to redraw the window. Press Alt+v-W to do it again, and note the shortcut key. Press F9 to do it yet again.

If it looks ok, save it:

Select File | Save to save the file under the same name as the original. Smart Characters automatically backs up small files in the same directory and file name with a .bak extension. If the file is large, Smart Characters asks whether you want to back it up or not.

If you have not registered your license, you will get an error message telling you that your file was not saved, with an error code. If so:

Select OK. Continue with the lesson in demonstration mode.
Optionally, register your license. See Registering Your License.

Quitting Smart Characters

Although it is not necessary to exit Smart Characters to work on another Windows (or DOS) program, try it now:

Select File | Exit to leave Smart Characters. Don't save any other files. The next time you return, the windows that are open now will be re-opened, as you left them.

Need more info? Go to the Customer Service Page. Questions or comments? E-mail to Apropos Customer Service

Apropos Customer Service home page 617-648-2041
Last Modified: March 23, 1996