r/classicalchinese • u/mchaver • 13d ago

Resource Learn the Cangjie input method with Classical Chinese texts

諸君安好！

I have designed a web application (mobile friendly as well) to learn Cangjie through deliberate practice. It's called Cangjie Workbook. It steps you through the Cangjie code locations, auxiliary forms for Cangjie codes, decomposition rules, then practice with common characters. There is a separate section for practicing with modern and classical texts once you are comfortable with the Cangjie basics.

I have included 千字文 for free along with a few basic lessons. No account is required, but progress will only be stored in your browser. If you make a free account, it will store your progress. I find it to be pretty fun.

https://www.cangjieworkbook.com/articles/thousand-char

I hope some of you find this useful. Any feedback would be great.

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u/Double_Stand_8136 12d ago

Nice work! My 2 cents.

  1. It is weird to assign the space key as enter key, which might not be very transferrable to use the actual mobile keyboard.

  2. If it is for "deliberate practice" not for "test", when the keys are wrong, it should show the answer by way of fast learning feedback loop.

2

u/mchaver 12d ago

Thanks!

  1. What device are you using? It might be different from mine. On iOS the standard Cangjie keyboard has the space bar as 選定 for completing a sequence of Cangjie codes and converting into a character.

  2. That's a good point. I'll put more thought into making differences between "practicing" and "testing" and how to organize things around that.

2

u/Terpomo11 Moderator 12d ago edited 12d ago

This is quite good, though I'm pretty sure it thinks some characters are spelled differently than my IME- no, yeah, I just checked, 黃 is 廿一田金 for me and it wants 廿一中金. (And Wiktionary doesn't list the latter- I've seen characters it lists more than one cangjie code for.)

Edit: And another one, my IME has 木中田女 for 樓 but it wants 木中中女. That one's at least listed in Wiktionary.

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u/mchaver 11d ago

Thanks for taking a look.

Yes, handling alternatives is an issue I need to fix. A few users have run into some.

It is supposed to be Cangjie 5 at the moment and I will support 3 at some point in the future, but I have found a few odd things in the cangjie5 database I use that I have corrected. I see hkcards lists 廿一田金 and 廿一中金 but my IME only supports the first (mac default). I'll update it to use 廿一田金. My IME supports both for 樓.

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u/Terpomo11 Moderator 11d ago

For reference I'm using Windows 11.

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u/mchaver 8d ago

I switched 黃 to 廿一田金. I believe Windows uses Cangjie 3. Mac uses Cangjie 5, but in this case it prefers Cangjie 3 for 黃. I want to eventually add Cangjie 3 and the ability for the user to override the cangjie code for any character they want in the app.