teaching ubuntu to grandpa - second step : Writing tablets

[sunix.org]

Chinese ubuntu community, Good day !

I'm a French guy with Chinese backgrounds. I can speak a bit of chinese, but can hardly read. So i though it would be a good place to have some help for my grand father.
Here is the situation : My grand pa wanted me to teach him how to use the computer. So I've set up my ubuntu desktop in Chinese so he can play games and start learning using the computer. He speaks only Cantonese and it was very hard to explain to him with my Cantonese vocabulary (how to say "click", "double click", etc ....). Anyway, after few months, he manages to play some cards game now.
Now the second step will be how to write in chinese so he can surf on the internet, and use google for example. I know a little bit of pinyin for typing in chinese, but I don't know anything about pinyin in Cantonese and neither do my grandpa (he's very old and don't know it). So a friend of mine told me that they was a way to write in Chinese easily with a writing tablets and because i don't know anything about that and can hardly read documentations that are not in French and English, I though it would be a good idea to ask you.
The few things I need to know are :
- Which brands/models of writing tablets are compatible with linux (ubuntu)
- How to install (which softwares and any third party module to install)

Thanks for your help

Sunix.

[rhfcaesar]

http://home.comcast.net/~jbmbweb/cantoinput/index.html

The attached please find a tool for Cantonese input. It's quite easy to use. You do not need to install it, just decompress it and ran "java -jar CantoInput.jar". But in your case, the problem may be that you must know Cantonese Pinyin to get it work.

Alternatively, you can try "倉頡輸入法" through scim. It does not require the user to know Pinyin.

[sunix.org]

... But in your case, the problem may be that you must know Cantonese Pinyin to get it work.
Alternatively, you can try "倉頡輸入法" through scim. It does not require the user to know Pinyin.

Yep, i've tried with scim but I and my grand pa don't know pinyin and it's very hard too teach him because of his age. That's why i was looking for the writing tablet solution.

[laborer]

Ubuntu should have no problem of supporting writing tablets since most of them use stardard wacom-compitable protocol. But a good chinese handwriting recognition software might be another story. I heard that 汉王, one of the largest companies in this business, has some handwriting products for linux. You can do some research about that on google. Here are a few of chinese phrases you might need.

代码： 全选

writing tablet        手写板     
writing input         手写输入   
writing recognition    手写识别
traditional chinese    繁体中文

I hope this will help. However, the market share of linux handwriting input products is tiny, you could only have few to choose from. If hardwriting is really important to your grandpa, I guess using windows instead is probably an easier and better choice.

[sunix.org]

I guess using windows instead is probably an easier and better choice.

Yeah but no from here it's harder to get a windows in chinese liscence and I don't want to spend money on that and i don't want to crack it as well. Anyway, thx for your help. I think i'll buy a writing tablet and i'll make some experimentation. I've just found something that can make the job http://www.kiang.org/jordan/software/hanzilookup/.
May not be as good as commercial products but i'll see how it goes and if i can modify it so it would be easily integrated in linux. I'll try to look in google for softwares as well see how it goes. Thx all


Edit : I was looking for a way to integrate this java program into SCIM and i found out tomoe. This software looks really interesting and will support chinese soon :
http://tomoe.sourceforge.jp/cgi-bin/en/blog/index.rb