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68.3% of people in China use third-party keyboards – many of them use Signal

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Re: 68.3% of people in China use third-party keyboards – many of them use Signal

#11

Post by jrockway »

novok wrote: post #10
xster wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they did, creating a Chinese IME is a really difficult problem space. Since typing is generally done phonetically in mainland/HK/taiwan and the real words being typed are ideographic, there's a lot of inference to translate in between. Considering how quickly the language moves to keep up with internet culture and new newsworthy names, new parlances, new memes, an IME has to do the equivalent of staying up to…

The side effects of chinese not adopting a phonographic writing system when it could, or having both like japanese does so you don’t need to use such an informal ambiguous layer when actually writing.

That doesn't really solve the problem. Homophones exist, and entering the phonetic representation in some native character set would still require an additional conversion step to disambiguate the homophone. (i.e. in Japanese you can type in hiragana, and many phone IMEs work like that, but you still have to convert that input to kanji; nobody wants to read your long stream of hiragana.) The input methods add value based on how frequently they suggest the correct conversion as the first candidate (based on context).

Imagine typing English by speaking. You can say "flower", but that might get written out as "flour". Some intelligence has to be implemented that picks the right one based on context, or give you the ability to correct it. That is where the complexity in east asian input methods come from.

(Yes, as English-speaking computer users we are very lucky. The exact sort of symbols that readers of English expect map 1:1 to our keyboards. Still kind of a pain on a phone, though!)

Re: 68.3% of people in China use third-party keyboards – many of them use Signal

#12

Post by yorwba »

novok wrote: post #10
xster wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they did, creating a Chinese IME is a really difficult problem space. Since typing is generally done phonetically in mainland/HK/taiwan and the real words being typed are ideographic, there's a lot of inference to translate in between. Considering how quickly the language moves to keep up with internet culture and new newsworthy names, new parlances, new memes, an IME has to do the equivalent of staying up to…

The side effects of chinese not adopting a phonographic writing system when it could, or having both like japanese does so you don’t need to use such an informal ambiguous layer when actually writing.

Japanese IMEs operate basically the same way as Chinese ones.

Re: 68.3% of people in China use third-party keyboards – many of them use Signal

#14

Post by bgee »

novok wrote: post #10
xster wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they did, creating a Chinese IME is a really difficult problem space. Since typing is generally done phonetically in mainland/HK/taiwan and the real words being typed are ideographic, there's a lot of inference to translate in between. Considering how quickly the language moves to keep up with internet culture and new newsworthy names, new parlances, new memes, an IME has to do the equivalent of staying up to…

The side effects of chinese not adopting a phonographic writing system when it could, or having both like japanese does so you don’t need to use such an informal ambiguous layer when actually writing.

Native Chinese speaker here.

I'm not sure I understand your point. Without keeping up with the new memes, IME still let people type them (it's simply not as easy when IME does not auto-suggest the new combination, users can manually select each Chinese character).

Regarding "an informal ambiguous layer", are you implying there is something more fundamental/low-level than the Chinese characters used in communication? If so, what is that?

Re: 68.3% of people in China use third-party keyboards – many of them use Signal

#15

Post by nucleardog »

xster wrote: post #7
ProAm wrote: post #4

I thought Signal came out with their own keyboard and I was excited.

Even if they did, creating a Chinese IME is a really difficult problem space. Since typing is generally done phonetically in mainland/HK/taiwan and the real words being typed are ideographic, there's a lot of inference to translate in between. Considering how quickly the language moves to keep up with internet culture and new newsworthy names, new parlances, new memes, an IME has to do the equivalent of staying up to…

Yep this. Even on computers, most Chinese people I know won’t use the OS’s IME and instead use third party programs.

There are entire companies that exist to solve just this problem that is basically orthogonal to Signal’s purpose and mission. While it would be great for there to be a top tier Chinese IME from someone we trust, it’s by no means an easy task like most people are probably envisioning.

Re: 68.3% of people in China use third-party keyboards – many of them use Signal

#16

Post by resynth1943 »

mam2 wrote: post #2

Im confused .. people are debating wether it's good to track what keyboard people use but instead of tracking which keyboard peoeple use, would it be not simpler for signal to basically build their own integrated keyboard and deactivate the android default one ?

I think the word 'track' is misleading in this context. The proposal outlines various methods to detect the use of a third-party keyboard, whereas the term 'track' commonly denotes corporate surveillance.

They could do that, but it would have a maintenance cost. I do think we need to find a solution to this, however, as these personalised keyboards actually _track_ what people type. That could have real-world implications.

Re: 68.3% of people in China use third-party keyboards – many of them use Signal

#17

Post by chickenpotpie »

I remember a few days ago there was a post on hackernews to stop being mean to the people that worked at signal. The Twitter user linked in that article is railing into signal devs and she calls them assholes that don’t care about what happens outside of western society.

https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/119769537620088012...

Re: 68.3% of people in China use third-party keyboards – many of them use Signal

#18

Post by resynth1943 »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #6

I'm not sure the headline reflects the discussion issue...It is anecdotal on how many Chinese users are using Signal, but the concern is that so many use third-party keyboards it could be compromising the secure nature of Signal (and the discussion is advocating for users to be made aware of the risks of using third party keyboards with Signal)

I chose to highlight the Chinese aspect, but you're absolutely right: any keyboard with personalisation puts Signal users at risk.

Re: 68.3% of people in China use third-party keyboards – many of them use Signal

#19

Post by u678u »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #13

How does Signal work in the context of the Great Firewall? Can china shut down Signal by banning traffic that seems like Signal communication??

Agreed this was my surprise about the headline. I assumed it'd be blocked.

Re: 68.3% of people in China use third-party keyboards – many of them use Signal

#20

Post by danbolt »

chickenpotpie wrote: post #17

I remember a few days ago there was a post on hackernews to stop being mean to the people that worked at signal. The Twitter user linked in that article is railing into signal devs and she calls them assholes that don’t care about what happens outside of western society. https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/119769537620088012...

The thread there is really interesting. Apparently the "OEM" IMEs aren't the ideal standard for Chinese input, so people tend to use a proprietary one like Sogou's. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sogou

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