Originally, we had the big shu-zhe-zhe-gou stroke in 馬 and 鳥 radicals as one stroke in simplified and traditional. Then, based on comos's comments and all the stroke order standards we could find, we started breaking that stroke up into two pieces (which does change the stroke order).

But zhouyi pointed out that many of his Chinese friends do write it as one stroke, so the way it was before was better.

With a little work, I can make it so that either the correct form or the convenient form is possible. But first, I want to ask: how do you write it? Should we support the double stroke shortcut here?

I think we should go with the authoritative version, if we need to choose. If other variants can be supported as well, fine. One important reason is that dictionaries rely on stroke counts. Another is that I have thousands of characters to learn, and I like the convenience of looking at one reference, and not polling my Chinese friends.

I'm sure 10 strokes is official, but I did pick up a children's character-learning book in Hong Kong which seemed to think 9 strokes.

Apart from that book, I've only seen it start as
1 heng
2 shu (left)
3 heng
4 heng
5 shu (centre)

I'm in favour of the 10 stroke option. All my dictionaries seem to think that is the best way...

@Malcolm, what all traditional stroke order dictionaries do you have?

As in, I want to find more for my own collection!

I have the following:

Oxford Chinese: 0-19-591150-4 (ISBN)
New Chinese-English: 962-04-1845-X
Xinhua: 962-07-0253-0
Far East: 957-612-463-8
(with English)

Kangxi Zidian: 7-5432-1165-3
Shangwu: 962-07-0211-5
Dalu ji Gang Ao Tai: 7-5639-0928-1
Jianfan: 957-634-251-1
(without English)

The last one isn't really a dictionary, more like a list of simplified to traditional characters.

Also, when texting in Chinese, I use stroke order to enter characters into my phone and it thinks it is 10 strokes.

I guess I'll leave off the double stroke shortcut on this one, then. So 10 strokes only. Thanks for the references, guys.

Thanks, @malcolm, I'll definitely check those references out.

Nick:

I've just noticed that my phone accepts two different entries for 馬, both 10 stroke:
One starts 一丨一一丨, the other starts 丨一一一丨. Both end with 乛丶丶丶丶.

Comos:

I forgot to list one book,
ISBN 7-5326-1268-6. It is a small book so I missed it when I scanned my bookshelf. It is just a list of characters but it does list some 異體字 in addition to 繁體 and 簡體.

Malcolm, we're trying to accept both of those orders, but we haven't gone through and standardized that yet.

Oh, one more question Malcolm - I'm looking specifically for traditional character references books that explicitly write out each character stroke by stroke - the only one I have now is the Far East 3000 Character Dictionary. Do any of the above dictionaries meet these requirements?

None of those dictionaries show the entire stroke order. I'd recommend an exercise book.

The only one I've got is ISBN 957-600-212-5 which is volume 9 of a set called 《常用三體硬筆字寫法》. But I'm afraid it probably isn't what you're looking for either as you can't look up a character， it is aimed more at Chinese people improving their calligraphy.

Sorry about that...

Nick, I think this might be of use to you, and any other user that's as passionate as I am about stroke order :) -

For traditional stroke order, I've finally figured out how to use the definitive Taiwanese stroke order reference that the government there has put online for free. I've only tried it in Vista, but here's what I did:
Control Panel -> Clock, Region and Language -> Change display language -> Admistrative (tab) -> Change system locale
Select "Chinese (Traditional, Taiwan)"
(I usually use Chinese (Simplified, PRC) so I can make use of QQ, a Chinese chat program)

Open up the site using Internet Explorer (It was garbled using either Chrome or Firefox, and I used IE 7 - haven't tried 8).

And so after all that I was able to use:
http://www.edu.tw/files/site_content/M0001/bishuen/c8.htm?open

I had found that site through the Wikipedia entry for stroke order. It may not be user friendly, but when I can find a character in my Far East 3000 Character Dictionary (has only happened once - 黽 - but it'll happen again) it's great to have.

And not to ruin the ending for those that want to read the book for themselves, the authoritative Taiwanese start is:

1 shu (left)
2 heng
3 heng
4 heng
5 shu (centre)

http://www.edu.tw/files/site_content/M0001/bishuen/p203b.htm?open

(you can access the above page without messing with any settings - an image file will be displayed)

Nice find. Is it different from the MOE site here? http://stroke-order.learningweb.moe.edu.tw/character.jsp

You can also manually change the page encoding in Firefox and Chrome (and probably IE and Safari, too). In Firefox it's under the View menu, in Chrome it's under the page menu (next to the wrench). Most pages are fine in Unicode (UTF-8), but for simplified Chinese you might need to switch to GB, and for traditional to Big5.

Oh, thanks, switching to Big 5 in Chrome worked - much easier than switching the non-Unicode language and having to restart the computer!

Yes, it is different from the MOE site - I'll have to check out that site, too.