ASCII.jp What do you read "鯢"? (The answer is the handwriting input function of the iPhone!)

Every Monday, members of the Fujimi iPhone Club will introduce a little iPhone tech. If you're an advanced iPhone user, you might think "what's up now ...", but there may be some stories that you don't know or aren't using.

The iPhone has an unknown handwriting input mode.

The nice thing about the iPhone is that you can quickly search for words you don't know or places you care about with the app. At that time, the bottleneck is "Kanji that you don't understand." Even if I try to search, I can't enter it because I don't know how to read the Chinese characters, so I can't look it up. However, there are techniques that are useful in such cases. In fact, not only Japanese and English but also keyboards in various languages ​​are registered on the iPhone. Among them, there is a Chinese keyboard that allows you to enter Chinese characters by handwriting, so you can use this to enter directly.

To do this, you first need to be able to use a Chinese keyboard. From the "Settings" app, tap [General], tap [Keyboard], select [Keyboards for each country], and add [Chinese-Simplified Chinese (handwriting)] from [Add new keyboard ...]. This completes adding the keyboard. When the character input keyboard (or numeric keypad) is open, you can tap the globe-shaped [Change Keyboard] button to input Chinese handwriting.

[Settings] App-> [General]-> [Keyboard]-> [Keyboards for each country]-> [Add new keyboard ...]-> [Chinese-Simplified Chinese (handwriting)]. It looks like a hassle, but in reality you just tap each one.By the way, next to the [Keyboards of each country] field is the number of keyboards that can be entered.

Let's actually search using handwriting input. This time I will use Safari. First, launch the app and tap the search field next to the URL. Then, tap or press and hold the [Change Keyboard] button to call up the Chinese keyboard registered in the previous procedure. This keyboard does not tap characters to enter them, but writes Chinese characters directly in the space at the bottom half of the screen. Input candidates appear on the right side while writing, so you can enter by tapping it. Then, tap [Search] on the left to start the search and display the candidates.

This is a useful technique when you can't read Chinese characters, but it's a little embarrassing to hear them. It can also be used when you want to enter a person with a slightly strange name by e-mail, which is difficult to come up with normal conversion.

Start Safari and tap the search field at the top right of the screen. You may be familiar with the Change Keyboard button, which has a globe-like icon, but you can press and hold it to jump to the keyboard you're looking for.I want you to remember this too

[Chinese-Simplified Chinese (handwritten)] The keyboard is a little unfamiliar, with an input field appearing in the lower half of the screen. You can literally enter "handwriting" in the space at the bottom of the screen.Even if the characters are a little confusing, if you write them, candidates will appear on the right side of the screen, so you can choose from them.

As a student, I often encounter obfuscated Chinese characters in academic books and lecture prints. In such a case, this function is useful. Of course, I can't read the characters, but I also recommend it when I'm not confident that "Is this reading correct?"