Where to find official documents that introduce the Wubi 86 input method?

Question

Table of contents

• The context
  • The input method I'm learning
  • Variant Chinese characters
  • Font used by the creator of Wubi 86
  • The version of Wubi I'm learning
  • What I'm looking for
• The question

The context

The input method I'm learning

I'm currently learning the Wubi input method (link to article in Wikipedia). I've made some graphics of the decomposition of characters in order to get familiar with the components defined by the input method (please see image below).

Variant Chinese characters

Some of us know that some characters (with a unique Unicode code) are shown differently with different fonts. This is relevant when learning shape-based input method because some fonts might display components that were not taken into consideration when the input method was designed. [This article on Wikipedia)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variant_Chinese_characters] has more information on this topic.

Font used by the creator of Wubi 86

Due to the existence of variance Chinese characters, in order not to confuse myself, I want to use the same font that was used by the creator when he was devising the input method. According to the article in Wikipedia, the inventor is called Wang Yongmin.

The method is also known as Wang Ma (simplified Chinese: 王码; traditional Chinese: 王碼; pinyin: Wáng mǎ; lit. 'Wang code'), named after the inventor Wang Yongmin (王永民).

The version of Wubi I'm learning

According to the article in Wikipedia, there are four Wubi versions

There are four Wubi versions that are considered to be standard: Wubi 86, Wubi 98, Wubi 18030 and Wubi New-century (the 3rd-generation Version).

I'm currently using the version 86. Because of this, it would be more helpful if those documents explained Wubi 86 and not the following versions.

What I'm looking for

By looking at documents that were published around the time of creation of the input method and that introduce it, we can find out which font was used when designing it. I'm sure there might be such documents available on the Internet (be it published by the creator itself or the organization he was working on when creating this method.)

In the image of the decomposition above, the font that I'm using is FandolKai Regular 0.3, the first version of this font was published on 31 July 2013. However, the input method was created in 1986, so this font was definitely not used by the creator.

I had previously asked a similar question (link to the question) but related to the four-corner input method. Hopefully, someone (link to answer) found a guide written by the the creator of that input method and published in 1967. I'm now looking the same type of information but for the Wubi input method.

The question

• Are there any documents online authored by Wang Yongmin that introduce Wubi 86?
  • If not, are there any documents online that were published some time after the release of Wubi 86 by notable institutions that introduce Wubi 86? (and they are likely to use the same font that was used by the creator)

Answer 1

You already know the name of the author: 王永民. If you search that name in Google Books, the first result is a book titled "电脑通用汉字输入法" whose publication date is 1986 and its author is 王永民 (see screenshot below).

That document should be the one that introduced the Wubi input method. I haven't read it but because it has the same author and it was published the same year that input method was created, then I suspect it is the document that introduced it. Unfortunately, preview is unavailable, so you need to find the book through other methods.