Chapter 756 Chinese Character Input Method

Chapter 756 Chinese Character Input Method

Chapter 756 Chinese Character Input Method

In the following week, Changhuang Real Estate, a joint venture between Changxing Real Estate and Hutchison Whampoa, successfully reached an agreement with the Hong Kong government to convert Whampoa Wharf from industrial to commercial use for HK$2.3 million. At the same time, it announced that it was preparing to develop Hong Kong's largest residential area, which would include a total of 1.2 residences, a commercial plaza with a Carrefour supermarket, a large kindergarten, a children's playground, and a community health hospital.

This is not only the largest residential building in Hong Kong's history, but also the most complete in terms of living facilities. As long as you live in it, you can live a relaxed life without having to go out to buy other daily necessities frequently, and your children's needs will also be met.

As soon as the news came out, Hutchison Whampoa's share price soared, and many home buyers also set their sights here. The location of Hung Hom is still very good. At least it is close to the Hung Hom Tunnel and it is very convenient to go to Hong Kong Island. Some people who cannot afford to buy a house in Hong Kong Island can buy one here, and the commuting time will not be very long.

The media also reported in depth on this residence, but strangely, the media did not mention the development company behind it. Although people know that this land used to be Huangpu Wharf, if no one mentions it, many people will not take the initiative to think of it;

On the other hand, Oriental Daily started to interview several self-made tycoons in Hong Kong, including Li Jiacheng, Li Zhaoji, Luo Yingshek, Chen Zengxi, Wang Dehui, etc. However, the interviews were not very comprehensive. Those who were willing to be interviewed were naturally reported in a longer article, while those who were unwilling to be interviewed were only reported briefly.

Among them, Li Jiacheng was naturally the focus of the interview, from his hard work in his childhood to the many failures in his subsequent entrepreneurial process. Part of the content was also exaggerated, which made many people feel that Li Jiacheng was really amazing.

"I never thought Li Jiacheng almost went bankrupt three times." A young man exclaimed after reading the content: "I thought everything went smoothly when these rich people started their businesses."

A woman next to him laughed and said, "How is that possible? You can't tell how many bankrupt people there are behind a successful rich man. This is called the survivor effect. In fact, many people who start businesses fail or even go bankrupt."

"Yes." The young man folded the newspaper and said, "But Li Jiacheng is no match for Yang Wendong. It's a pity that he doesn't have Yang Wendong's entrepreneurial process."

The Hong Kong public knows a little about Yang Wendong's entrepreneurial process, but not much, and they are not sure whether what they have seen is true, after all, there has been no official report on this matter;
The woman said, "Yes, it's a shame not to have this, but maybe it will be available in a few days."

"Well, then I have to read the newspaper." The man nodded.

It was just a pity that in the next few days, Oriental Daily continued to report on the entrepreneurial stories of other wealthy people, and even talked about the stories of wealthy entrepreneurs in the 30s, but there was no story about Yang Wendong;
TVB interviewed Li Jiacheng individually and found a few children who looked similar to Li Jiacheng. They filmed a short drama to simulate Li Jiacheng's entrepreneurial story, so that the entire Hong Kong public almost knew Li Jiacheng.

Influenced by this, the stocks of Cheung Kong Holdings also saw a surge, and the residential areas owned by Li Jiacheng were also surrounded by more people. Whether they were scalpers or home buyers, they all came here because they knew Li Jiacheng's name. This is also a brand effect.

The continued stable development of Hong Kong's economy also allowed Yang Wendong to predict his own income in the next few years. At the same time, it was about to enter a new era. On the one hand, the electronics industry entered a stage of rapid development with the emergence of personal computers and game consoles. On the other hand, the mainland's reform and opening up provided unlimited opportunities.

On the 2nd, Yang Wendong came to the laboratory of Honor Electronics in North Point:
In the experiment, a dozen people were playing games in front of a dozen arcade machines. On the game interface, different blocks fell from above. If someone in later generations saw it, they would definitely know that this was the most famous "Tetris", but nowadays, its name is "Chinese Blocks".

Yang Wendong looked at it for a while, and Wang Zhiqun beside him said, “Mr. Yang, according to your request, we have developed the game together with several technical engineers from the United States. There are a total of seven different block structures falling from above;

Although the game is out, the algorithm is not yet. We are not sure what the best logic is for the seven blocks to fall down, and the difficulty modes are different, so the program needs to be different. Everything is still under exploration. "

"In other words, the hardware is completed, but the software is not yet completed?" Yang Wendong asked back.

Wang Zhiqun explained: "That can't be said. The software is indeed not finished and we need to continue testing, but the hardware is not finished yet either, because we have used 180 8080 Intel chips to build the underlying framework first, and then do software testing;

But the cost of this number of chips is too high. Even if Intel gives us the cost price, we can’t afford it. So after the subsequent software is determined, we need to re-develop the hardware based on the software to reduce the cost of the hardware. We can only accept 50 chips at most.”

"The number of chips is indeed the biggest cost." Yang Wendong nodded and said, "But this is very difficult, right?"

Wang Zhiqun nodded and said, "Yes, but we haven't reached that stage yet. As for the software, we don't know how long it will take to find the optimal algorithm. Once the algorithm is out, we can consider reducing the cost of hardware."

"Well, it seems that this is also a waste of time." Yang Wendong said;

Although he had played Tetris in his previous life, normal people would not know the logic behind the blocks falling down, only the developers could;
So he can’t do anything in this regard, and he can’t even help with the subsequent reduction of hardware costs;

As the electronics industry becomes more and more complex, time travelers can only provide accurate routes, but there is no other way on the technical level. Therefore, Yang Wendong also attaches great importance to technology. Only when the technology has reached a certain level can he realize some of the creative ideas in his mind. Otherwise, no matter how good the ideas are, they will be useless.

Wang Zhiqun said: "Yes, at present, there is no problem with software testing in Hong Kong, but in order to reduce the cost of hardware in the future, we may need to find technicians from the United States."

"Well, I'm going to the United States in a while, and I'll go and ask then to see if there's anyone suitable." Yang Wendong nodded and said.

It is said that in the past, Atari once developed a game, but the requirement for the number of chips was too high. The entire team worked on it for two months, but the number of chips could not be reduced. This made the cost of this arcade game exceed US$5000, which obviously could not be sold.

So, a message was sent inside Atari that whoever could successfully reduce costs would receive a $10,000 reward, which was a huge sum of money in that era.

Jobs, who was working at Atari at the time, was interested and found his good friend Wozniak, the other future founder of Apple.

Wozniak was very talented and successfully reduced the number of chips in a few days. Then Jobs went back to report and received $500. However, he was a bit of a jerk and only gave Wozniak $.
This also shows that the IT industry, like mathematics and physics, relies on talent. Ten thousand people with weak talent cannot beat one person with strong talent, just like there are only a few Einstein-level figures in the past few hundred years. "That's great." Wang Zhiqun said with a smile;

Yang Wendong asked again: "In terms of software algorithms, do we in Hong Kong have a certain amount of technical reserves now?"

Wang Zhiqun replied: “Yes, over the years, we have trained many people, including sending them to study at Intel, or a few outstanding people, at the company’s expense, to study at American universities;

Although it is still far from Silicon Valley, and the basic logic of the software cannot be compared, the application is much simpler. Moreover, many of the algorithms of China Cube are various tests rather than technical research and development, so it is relatively much simpler. "

"I'm not talking about Chinese Cube, but another software." Yang Wendong said: "I want you to develop an input method software."

"Input method software?" Wang Zhiqun was a little confused.

Yang Wendong said: "The language of the United States is English. English can be directly input into the computer through the keyboard. Do you know this?"

"Yes." Wang Zhiqun nodded.
Yang Wendong added: "Over in Europe, although many countries do not speak English, it is basically the same, with only a few letters different. For them, they can input other letters by slightly changing the software settings on the keyboard;
But have you ever thought about what to do with our Chinese language, Chinese characters? How to input them into the computer? "

"In Hong Kong, even if computer programs are used, they are generally in English, so we don't have this problem for the time being." Wang Zhiqun also understood what the boss meant and said, "Mr. Yang, do you want to create a Chinese input mode software?"

Yang Wendong nodded and said, "Yes."

Wang Zhiqun thought for a while and said, "Mr. Yang, the structure of Chinese is too different from English. The keyboard is also based on English. It's a bit difficult to start. Should we base it on the pinyin of the mainland? But in this case, Cantonese can't be used anymore."

"So what you mean is that we will all use English for input from now on?" Yang Wendong asked with a smile.

Wang Zhiqun said: "In the short term, this is the most convenient method. At least those of us who know computers can speak English."

Yang Wendong shook his head and said, "But I am considering the entire Chinese nation. Computers are developing rapidly now. I estimate that many institutions will use computers in the future, not just in Hong Kong, but also in Taiwan, Southeast Asia and even in the mainland in the future. You can't expect them to all know English, right?"

Personal computers had not yet appeared, and there was no concept, so Yang Wendong did not mention it, but industrial computers and commercial computers had already begun to become popular in the United States. It was through this opportunity that Wang An became the richest Chinese in the United States.

Outside the United States, some economically developed areas have also begun to use computers. After all, even if the performance of computers in this era is average, it is still much better than manual labor.

In the short term, those who can access computers are high-tech talents, who basically know English, but in the long term, it is hard to say, let alone the future era of personal computers;
Because Chinese is not convenient to input into computers, some extreme people even think that Chinese should be abolished and replaced by pinyin. However, they did not expect that in the future AI era, Chinese will be the most suitable language.

Researching Chinese input methods is extremely time-consuming, so Yang Wendong is also prepared to do research in advance, which may take several years. When the personal computer trend reaches Asia, he will happen to have an input method, which will be convenient for many people. To exaggerate a little, it can even promote the development of the technology industry in the Chinese region in advance, because input methods are the foundation of all computer activities, and they cannot be used at all without them.

Wang Zhiqun also knew that his boss' intention was unacceptable, so he asked, "Has Mr. Yang decided which direction to start research and development?"

Yang Wendong replied: "It won't work from pinyin, because there are too many dialects, so I plan to start from the structure of Chinese characters. Nowadays, there are only two types of Chinese characters in the world: simplified and traditional. This way, it will be much simpler for us."

In the past, most people in the mainland spoke Mandarin, but this is no longer the case. Not to mention Cantonese in Hong Kong, even if two places in the mainland are separated by dozens of miles, the language may be completely different.

The popularization of Mandarin in the mainland is, on the one hand, the result of many years of compulsory education, and on the other hand, the popularization of televisions and radios has enabled many locals in various places to understand Mandarin.

The structure of Chinese is much simpler.

"We also need to make a simplified Chinese version?" Wang Zhiqun had not thought of this.

Yang Wendong said: "Although traditional Chinese characters are different from simplified Chinese characters, since we are going to make them, let's do them together. The cost won't be much higher. There are many aspects that can be referenced. Let's do it all at once."

Wang Zhiqun said: "In theory, it is true, but even if it is produced, it may be difficult to collect copyright fees. It is said that there is no copyright law in the mainland yet."

"Let's talk about this later. The research on Chinese character input method is very difficult. I don't know how many years it will take to develop it. After a few years, maybe the situation will be different." Yang Wendong said nonchalantly;
In fact, it is not without opportunities. The domestic patent law was promoted by Volkswagen and SAIC during their cooperation, probably in 1984.
However, given the economic conditions in the mainland, even with patent laws, not much money can be made. The real profit core is still in the overseas market. At least before the popularization of Internet input methods, Wubi input method still has great advantages.

Considering the mainland’s exchanges with overseas countries after the 90s, this market is not bad;

Of course, money is a small matter. Being able to solve this problem will be enough to be recorded in history. It will also greatly increase the reputation of Honor Electronics in China, which will be of great help to Honor in gaining the domestic computer and even home appliance market.

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(End of this chapter)