We have noted that East Asian character sets number their characters in the thousands. So how do you, quickly, find the one character you want while typing?

In the past people have tried using extremely large keyboards, or forcing people to remember the code point numbers for the character. Not surprisingly these approaches were not very popular.

The answer is to use an IME (Input Method Editor). An IME (also called a front-end processor) is software that uses a number of strategies to help you search for the character you want.