Ever since the world went digital, there has been something of a Holy Grail journey in Chinese word processing: finding the most efficient way to enter Chinese characters.
We have all heard the horror stories of Chinese typewriters of the past. They had hundreds of 'keys', and it could take ages to find a single character. It was certainly true that in the past it took an expert to set up a page for printing in Chinese.
With the computer, much has changed. There are essentially two schools of thought: use a system based on the shape of the character (Cang Jie or Q9) or simply enter the romanised version of the pronunciation and let the computer find the character. Since the late 1950s, everyone in China has had to learn the Pinyin system of romanising Mandarin (Putonghua) created by the government. This is difficult in Hong Kong and a few other places because most people here are shaky at best when it comes to pronouncing the characters correctly in Putonghua.
It is not impossible to use a romanised system for Cantonese - the Yale system, for example - but the mode is not popular. Systems based on shape, however, are popular.
With Q9, there is an attempt to do two things at the same time: make it quick and easy to enter characters based on shape, and also make it easy to do the same on a mobile phone. Q9 succeeds quite well at this.
Using nine keys, each representing a different stroke, you can enter almost any character with just a handful of strokes or key presses. The system is fairly intuitive, although it takes some getting used to.
Unfortunately, the product comes in Chinese only, even though there is a lot of English on the website.