Screenshot of Sogou Pinyin |
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Developer(s) | Sohu |
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Initial release | 2006 |
Stable release | 6.0 / June 14, 2011 |
Operating system | Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Symbian S60, Windows Mobile, Android |
Available in | Simplified Chinese |
Type | Input method |
Website | Sogou Pinyin |
Sogou Pinyin Method (搜狗拼音输入法; Pinyin: Sōugǒu Pīnyīn Shūrùfǎ) is a popular Chinese Pinyin input method editor developed by Sogou, a Chinese search engine.
A Sohu announcement, released on June 5, 2009, indicated that Sogou Pinyin input software has been installed more than 80 million times since it was released three years ago, and Sogou input software captures about 70% of the Chinese IME market.[1]
The latest stable version of Sogou Pinyin is 6.0, in which version several new features such as customizable pinyin alias and simultaneous input of both English and Chinese are added.[2]
Contents |
Sogou Pinyin provides features for customizing its dictionary, appearance and function. The dictionary of Sogou Pinyin can be enriched by adding so-called cell dictionaries, which contain words in special fields.[3] The appearance of Sogou Pinyin can be changed using skins and animation.[4] The function of Sogou Pinyin can be extended using extensions such as mouse-writing.[5]
It does not recognize localized keyboards; it assigns all Western characters to their positions on the English keyboard (Y is always the sixth key from left on the second row of the keyboard), that means the mapping of the keys and the relevant characters does not work. The English-speaking world uses a QWERTY-keyboard; other language groups use other keyboards, e.g. the German-speaking world uses a QWERTZ-keyboard. Different from input of western words (like "zebra" or "yet") on a German keyboard, the Sogou Pinyin Method does not recognize that on a German keyboard the letters "Z" and "Y" are interchanged. Like this, using the "Sogou Pinyin Method" on German keyboard when a user wants to type the Chinese words 'you 有' you get 'zou 走' instead, and if you type 'yi 一' you get 'zi 字' instead.
In April 2007, Sohu threatened to sue Google because after Google Pinyin's initial release, it was soon discovered that Google Pinyin's dictionary database contained employee names of Sogou Pinyin.[6] On April 8, 2007, Google admitted that they used "non-Google database resources". Shortly thereafter, a new version of Google Pinyin was released which no longer appeared to be based on Sogou's database.[7]
In 2009, Sogou launched a Bookmarklet named Sogou Cloud Pinyin (搜狗云输入法) that can allow any major browser to input Chinese characters on a webpage without installing any new software or plugins. It uses JavaScript and Ajax on the browser and apparently cloud computing technology on the servers.
Version 1.0.1.4 (2006.6.5) Version 1.0.1.6 (2006.6.21) Version 1.0.1.7 (2006.7.21) Version 1.0.2.0 (2006.8.15) Version 1.0.2.2 (2006.9.5) Version 1.5 Beta1 (2006.10.11) Version 1.5 Beta2 (2006.11.17) Version 1.5 Beta3 (2007.1.17) Version 2.0 (2007.1.29 ) Version 3.0 Beta1 (2007.3.2) Version 3.0 Beta2 (2007.7.2) Version 3.0 (2007.10.18) Version 3.1 (2007.12.28) Version 3.2 (2008.2.4) Version 3.3 (2008.5.5) Version 3.5 (2008.6.5) Version 3.6 (2008.9.11) Version 4.0 (2008.12.29) Version 4.1 (2009.3.18) Version 4.2 (2009.6.5) Version 4.3 (2009.10.26) Version 4.3.1 (2009.12.2) Version 5.0 (2010.3.25) Version 5.1 (2010.9.20) Version 5.2 (2011.1.24) Version 6.0 (2011.6.14)
See Sogou Pinyin Update Catalog for detail.