COMPONENT-BASED, ADAPTIVE STROKE-ORDER SYSTEM

An efficient and simple approach to encoding ideographic characters as sequences of input strokes or stroke categories is disclosed, wherein: each character is represented by one or more sequences of one or more components; each component corresponds to a plurality of alternative stroke sequences, each of which is associated with a probability that it will be the sequence which the user enters to specify the given component or character; and the probability associated with the user's preferred stroke sequence is automatically increased by the system when the character is selected, thus automatically adapting to a user's preferences.