Existing methods of looking up a Chinese character such as looking for its radicals, zhuyin, or romanization give only ambiguous results. On the other hand, while Chinese script has no alphabet, most characters are compounds of a common set of components. Chu assumed that it was possible to encode Chinese characters with a group of 'Chinese alphabets' which can be mapped on a common keyboard. After studying dictionary cut-outs and conducting many tests, the team released a table of 8,000 encoded characters in 1976. This result was unsatisfactory for general use but did however prove the possibility of encoding Chinese in this way.