I'm puzzled by keyboard changing

[Jim Kay]

I have installed all of the Chinese keyboards that the iPad offers (both traditional and simplified.)

And I was expecting the 'globe' key to cycle through them and the handwriting input as well, but it doesn't.

To access all of the keyboards requires some indefinite combination of pressing the ".?123" key and then the "globe" which reveals keyboards otherwise unreachable.

I have not yet worked out an exact and repeatable sequence, partly because I cannot always read the Chinese on the keys and partly because I'm not always even sure which keyboard I'm looking at.

But it is definitely "a puzzlement."

 

[mikelove]

Globe for language / 123 for punctuation, basically. You can tap-hold on the globe to get a menu that'll let you jump between languages faster.

 

[Jim Kay]

(Responding for the second time.)

Indeed, and thank you again.

The irony, not Pleco caused, is that I am using my iPad in conjunction with a Chinese learning program and the keyboard names (other than the one English Keyboard) all come up in Chinese which I cannot read. And I certainly cannot read it fast enough to keep up with it almost immediately vanishing again.

A second irony, from Pleco and Apple together, is that the area where I am typing on my iPad is directly under the keyboard. Yes I can move it around but as soon as I begin to type, it moves back under the keyboard.

A third irony--and the reason I am responding a second time--is that (maybe Siri was watching?) just as I was about finished tediously typing and then scrolling so I could find my typing errors and try to fix them, my entire response suddenly vanished. So now I'm typing on my PC keyboard and it's all much easier. (Microsoft permits me to criticize Apple as well as criticize Microsoft. Apple, perhaps, does not allow criticism of Apple.)

 

[sandwich]

And I certainly cannot read it fast enough to keep up with it almost immediately vanishing again.

Just echoing what Mike said, but tap and hold the globe button down and the list of keyboards doesn't dissapear until you lift your finger.

The irony, not Pleco caused, is that I am using my iPad in conjunction with a Chinese learning program and the keyboard names (other than the one English Keyboard) all come up in Chinese which I cannot read.

Yes it is a little weird that the settings menu show locialized descriptions but the keyboards dont. You should get used to it quick enough. Maybe consider turning off the keyboards you dont actually need to reduce confusion. At a guess, unless you have specific needs you will probably only need pinyin (拼音) and hand input (手寫) for either simplified or traditional.

 

[Jim Kay]

"tap and hold" is the answer. Danke-schöne!

Most of the time I type traditional and switch between Cangjie and Zhuyin. I dislike pinyin because I cannot seem to master the changing pronunciations among u, ue, ui, un, uo, o, ou, ong, and a bunch more that force me to keep a 'cheat sheet' post-it hanging on my monitor. And, in the Microsoft world there is no pinyin keyboard for typing traditional characters. (If you know of one, do please tell me what it is. I had high hopes for 'pinyinput' but that only allows you to generate pinyin with diacritical marks, not including the third-tone along with the umlaut on one character.) One up for Apple on this score.

 

[alanmd]

Google's pinyin IME (for Windows) allows you to type in traditional. It's not localized to English, but there are a few guides that tell you the important settings (and how to type in Yraditiknal) such as http://www.laoshilink.org/laoshilink/GoogleIME.html

The order of the iOS keyboards doesn't change (and is configurable on the settings) so if you set them to an order that seems logical they will be in that order when you tap-hold (as someone else said the character 手 may be enough to remind you which one is 'hand' writing though).