Writing in Mandarin an e-approach

Having recently upgraded my computer to windows 8, I also decided to figure out how to type in Chinese on my PC. I've been writing simple sentences for some time on my android device, but never really figured it out for my PC.

So let me explain some of the problems encountered and solutions I've found for these:

Typing with the Pinyin system but using traditional characters

So for me, by far the easiest method to use to learn Chinese has been the Pinyin system, it uses characters I already recognize and assigns symbols to the tones. But out of the box, not many Pinyin input systems allow for traditional character output.

Android

For my android device, I've tried many different input methods, now remember this is specifically for Pinyin with traditional character output. If you want to use simplified character output there are a lot more options with Pinyin input. 

The best keyboard I have found so far has actually been the Google pinyin input keyboard, you can set it up so the keyboard will switch between languages with a single button press - which is very handy. Unfortunately depending on your device, you may have a stock keyboard which can get in the way of this (you can always solve this by rooting your phone to uninstall it using something like titanium backup, but I will not have anything to do with trying to explain to you how to root your phone so don't ask me^^ ).

Windows 8.1

So.... I played around a bit with this. And eventually thanks to this really great resource Pinyin Joe, found the perfect setup for myself.

First I wanted to have my OS switchable to traditional Chinese but also use the pinyin input. To achieve this there are two options. The second I found to be the best for me, but both have their merits.

Option one

Chinese (Traditional, Hong Kong SAR) language pack combined with Chinese (Simplified, China) language pack. 

To do this, use windows key + s and search for language ("add a language" should appear). Click this and you should see the screen below.

From here click Add a language, navigate to "Chinese" and you will see three languages available. Install the two language packs:

Chinese (Traditional, Hong Kong SAR) 

Chinese (Simplified, China) 

This will allow you to have your OS in Traditional Chinese and be able to type using Pinyin.

Now we need to configure the input. return to the add language screen, and click on options for the Chinese (Simplified, China) 中文(中华人民共和国), then the options by Microsoft Pinyin Input.

You can see that there is an option for traditional Chinese character set.

The nice thing about this option: 

It can easily switch between English and Chinese input by pressing shift or ctrl (I suggest ctrl or every time you make a letter uppercase you'll switch input) So you can pretty much never have to change your input method.

The input method "looks nice", see below, you can clearly see the available characters. 

How ever this leads to the issue with this input method, you cannot specify the tone, so if the character you actually want isn't within the viewable list, you have to scroll to find it.

The bad side:

I don't know much about character encoding, but it seems there is an issues with the encoding method for traditional Chinese characters that this method uses. So it's actually better to use the Microsoft Bopomofo IME method. If you don't care about this and you will never actually have to send any documents etc to a business client, then the previous method should work just fine.