[andrezsanchez]

> "Using pinyin as you suggest is actually hopelessly slow"

Everyone I've encountered in China seems to do it just fine. It is only hopelessly slow if you type one character at a time.

> "adopting an input method based on the character radical composition or handwriting recognition is much faster"

What character radical input method are you talking about? I can't imagine any input method using radical composition being faster, it would be comparable to using Latin roots to type out English words; there are just too many to be practical. You can actually do this on Pleco, but it takes forever, even longer than typing one character at a time in pinyin.

Handwriting could work assuming you can handwrite Chinese quickly (I would be deathly slow as I can't read a typical handwritten cursive note, much less write one). I think handwriting recognition is already pretty good, people just use pinyin because it's the easiest.

[girzel]

The wubi input method (五笔字形) uses radical composition or something like it -- keys represent different (semi-arbitrary) character portions, and you "build" characters by choosing the portions, and adding other keys that indicate the overall shape of the character. You can get nearly any character out there in four keys, usually much less, and it also does phrase input. It's much harder to learn, obviously, but a practiced wubi typist is supposed to be able to go faster than pinyin.

Over the years I've tried to teach myself, and I can sort of do it, but I never got fast enough to really switch away from pinyin.

[xiaoma]

Pinyin is just fine (or zhuyin in my case), but the parent is right about one thing. Structure based inputs like Cangjie and Wubi are really fast. Fewer strokes per character and zero need to select from a list mean more speed.