Pinyinput - Type Pinyin with Tone Marks

[imron]

Like I said, I use a Mac now so I didn't try it.

which will run on any Windows 32-bit system

P.P.S a 64-bit version of Pinyinput was probably one of the most asked for features before I finally got around to implementing it some several years after the initial Pinyinput release.

[Manuel]

Autohotkey_L v1.1.07.01 (the latest version at the time of writing) comes with a script compiler that allows users to create 64-bit executables, In order to do this I would have to install Autohotkey on a 64-bit system which I don't have, therefore I cannot generate the 64-bit version myself, but in theory it'd be a 10-second job. Furthermore, it is possible that Windows x64 may be happy to run the 32-bit .exe without issues.

[orentaub11]

i8 nhave successfuly instaled thepinyinpit program.after instalation it doesn't appear on the language toolbar and i have no idea how can i use this program.i have windows 7 and explorer9.

can someone help me with this?

orentaub@zahav.net.il

[imron]

What locale did you install it under?

Also can you please go to:

Start -> Control Panel -> Region and Language -> Keyboards and Languages -> Change Keyboards

And then take a screen shot of the "Text Services and Input Languages" dialog box so I can see what input methods you have installed.

[AYRYZIGER]

I am a beginner in Chinese, and this will help a lot.

Thanks a lot.

I think this is better than the PinYin Input on IME's context menu.

[MaiaRooster]

Hi! I'm a beginner in learning Mandarin. The pinyin input has been a very big help, especially the new version. Thanks a lot for making this available to everyone.

[imron]

Glad you find it useful

[greenfier]

thanks Imron, it is working

[sophyi214]

Thank you for sharing this practical tool, which I do appreciate.

I tired to download Pinyinput, however, it shows " Please ensure you have write access to the Windown System folder". Could you please help me with this issue?

Thank you very much.

[imron]

When you installed it, did you right-click on the install file and select "Run as Administrator"?

[flip]

I've installed the program at the heart of this thread (and made my contribution!) but although I can use it in Corel Write and notebook I can't seem to use it in Wordperfect 12. Can someone tell me if I'm missing something or doing something wrong?

[imron]

(and made my contribution!)

Thanks!

What happens when you try to use it in Wordperfect? Does the Pinyinput toolbar display at all (but just with no input), or is it not even possible to switch to Pinyinput?

[flip]

The screen looks exactly as it does with Corel Write or Notepad. When I enter Ni4 the characters in the box become Nì but when I press enter or space the original English charcaters without the numeral 4 appear in the Wordperfect screen.

[imron]

Unfortunately, WordPerfect 12 doesn't seem to be available for download on Corel's site. I tried downloading a trial of their latest Wordperfect X6, and it seems to work ok (although it does a bad job of fonts).

What keyboard locale did you install Pinyinput under? English or Chinese?

[flip]

English (British) keyboard. Although I wasn't intending to use MS Word, I noted your caution regarding the keyboard locale and took care to use an English language keyboard setting.

I'm sorry I write regarding a non-current WP but the days are long past when I could justify upgrading to the latest WP. The changes from one release to another are so slight - especially with an excellent product like WordPerfect which seems to be backwards compatible almost to the legendary 5.1 release.

Regarding the fonts, it seems to default to MS Mincho, a font that was installed by WordPerfect and can't be removed. It looks awful and is badly spaced but changing the work afterwards to Tahoma produces good and correctly spaced work.

Thanks for your attention.

[imron]

Actually, I've been playing around with it a bit, and WPX6 handles tone marks (and other non-ascii latin characters) very poorly, even when not using Pinyinput, and inputting tones in other ways. So much so in fact, that I would consider it seriously broken - so definitely not worth upgrading for in the hope of a working Pinyinput

This has got me wondering however whether the problem for you is being caused by Pinyinput or WP12. A simple way to check would be to copy and paste the following string of text:

nī ní nǐ nì wèntǐ zài nǎr

into WP12 and see if it displays correctly. If it doesn't then the problem is with WP12 not being able to display characters with tones correctly. If it does display correctly, then it might still be WP, but at least we've started to narrow things down a bit.

You might also check to see whether changing the "Tone Marks on Vowels" option in the Pinyinput configuration screen makes a difference.

Normally 'individual' characters works best, and on WPX6, combining diacritics seem to be completely broken - it doesn't even preserve the unicode text, so copying and pasting it to another application destroys the combining diacritic completely!

But it sounds like WP12 handles input differently from WPX6 if you say changing the font makes the tones look correct. On WPX6, it's completely borked, even when using Tahoma, or something like Arial Unicode MS.

[flip]

The problem certainly seems to be WP12. Your response as advised included another string (which wasn't in the forum message) - neither string displayed correctly.

Conversely both strings displayed correctly in Corel Write. I'll have to start using that until I'm established on my course and have the necessary ID to buy a student version of the current MS word.

Thanks for your help.

[imron]

Originally I had two strings of the exact same text, but different methods for specifying tones - one with individual characters (i.e. the tone is part of the character) and one with combining diacritic marks (the character and the tone are two separate characters and application displaying such text is supposed to combine them for display). Unfortunately it seems like either this site, or the browser was not only combining them for display, but also converting the character + combining diacritics character into a single character with that tone. This made the strings identical and defeated the purpose of having both of them and so I updated my original message.

If you're looking for an inexpensive Word Processor that does work with Pinyinput (at least it did last I checked), you might also consider Open Office and/or LibreOffice (a fork of Open Office).

[flip]

May I ask one other question regarding the way that pinyinput is supposed to work?

When entering jiào I can type all four letters then add the numeral 4 which places the correct tone mark. However, when wishing to write the pinyin word xìe typing xie and then the numeral 4 places the correct tone on the e not the i. To place it on the i have to enter xi4 as one group then separately the e.

Is this correct? I am, as you will gather, at the very beginning of my learning.

[imron]

Pinyinput has two modes - checked and unchecked. In checked mode (the default) it follows the rules for tone placement in pinyin, and the tone will always be placed over the correct vowel when you type a number at the end of a syllable. For the syllable xie, this is over the e, not the i.

If you wish to place tones over arbitrary and not necessarily correct vowels, then it's best to use 'unchecked' mode. This can be set either via the toolbar (it's the button that looks like a 'tick' mark), or from the config settings. In this mode you simply type the number after the vowel you want to contain the tone, so to type xìe you would type xi4e. Unlike checked mode, it won't check that what you are entering is valid pinyin, so you could also type things like xìè with xi4e4 and so on.