Google has released a Pinyin-based character-input method for Windows systems. It offers a number of special features … which I don’t have time to detail right now, sorry. Read about them here: Google Gǔgē pīnyīn shūrùfǎ gōngnéng jièshào. And download the program from this page.
Pinyin News
news and discussions mainly related to Chinese characters and romanization
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If you downloaded the program more than a day ago, you should get the updated version. The earlier version apparently had a security hole for Vista users. You might want to hurry, because it appears Google lifted some data for this from Sohu and this is getting a lot of press in China.
This is a great tool, definitely better than what you get by default on Windows. I was a little disappointed, however, that there was no English documentation – – my Chinese isn’t quite good enough to understand all the options and what not.
So I spent a few days with a dictionary, and now have a translation of the main setup options. It’s available here to whoever might need it.