Pinyinput - Type Pinyin with Tone Marks

[imron]

My pinypin installation works well.

Ah ok, that's great to know then Sorry I can't be of help with the MS Pinyin though.

[muyongshi]

For all the mac users out there...

There is a great (free) pinyin with tone marks input method called biaoyin. It can be found at http://www.yale.edu/chinesemac/pages/romanization.html

Hope this is useful as well!

[imron]

For the mac, I've just been using my own input method plugin. Not sure how it compares to the one you linked to, but it works well enough that I've not yet bothered porting Pinyinput to the Mac.

[madcow]

I tried the IME, it works great.

I like the option "use combining diacritical marks" which works well for the basic fonts.

however is there a way you could allow for finetuning the placing of the tone marks so that It can be made compatible with all fonts?

[imron]

however is there a way you could allow for finetuning the placing of the tone marks so that It can be made compatible with all fonts?

If you are talking about the position of the combining tone mark diacritical when it is rendered above a normal character, then no, there is no way to do this. This is handled separated per application as part of that application's text rendering code. Because this is quite often broken in many applications, the safest way is not to use the combining diacritical marks.

[madcow]

that's too bad. I guess I have to refrain from using 30 different fonts in my document (sh)

Seriously, is there a list of compatible fonts?

[imron]

Nope, and you'll find it's not just a font problem, but also an application problem. In one program a given font might work nicely with the combining characters, and in another the same font might completely mess them up.

[madcow]

OK that's too bad. But many thanks anyway to a program that I was looking for a long time.

[shibole]

This is awesome! xièxie!

[metamorph]

As a Dvorak user I was glad to see PinyinInput is compatible. However, I can't get PinyinInput to function in Dvorak -- please let me know what may be preventing this.

Thanks!

[imron]

Are you able to be a little more specific about what part is not working? And also let me know what application you were using, what text you were trying to type, and at what point in the process pinyinput did not function correctly?

[Luo Zhou]

Thanks imron

this is the whack, way better than the macros I was using before

[imron]

Moved discussion about other Chinese IMEs here.

[LaoWai]

When I use pinyinput to type bù here in this box, it appears correctly. But in a Microsoft Word document (2003, using Windows XP SP2)) I can type the initial letter b, but not the full bu. I am trying to type "kuai4" here with pinyinput, but can only type "kua" but nothing else happens. Suggestions?

[imron]

It's strange that nothing appears. I've just tested in now in Office 2003 and don't have any problems. Can you tell me what happens if you try typing in unchecked mode? (click on the button on the toolbar that looks like a check-mark).

Also does it happen as part of a longer phrase? Or only when you want to type the word by itself?

[atitarev]

Regarding the first post

I actually added some links to here in Wikipedia and another forum. I already said thank you and I have been part of this forum Perhaps it did work on attracting some people.

[aymann]

Thank you so much imron. Keep up the good work.

[muppetwonder]

Hey, this is pretty cool!

Do you intend on building a version or extending the current one so that what you select are the actual Chinese characters/words/phrases, but what is outputted is the pinyin with tones?

I don't know about anyone else, but it's actually more natural for me to see the Chinese words than to see the pinyin. But I pinyin output for creating learning tools and worksheets, of course.

[imron]

Do you intend on building a version or extending the current one so that what you select are the actual Chinese characters/words/phrases, but what is outputted is the pinyin with tones?

Not really, because there are so many homonyms in Chinese that building in character prediction would require a significant amount of development effort for what is not really that huge a gain. Also development of pinyinput has slowed somewhat since I switched to a Mac.

[muppetwonder]

Not really, because there are so many homonyms in Chinese that building in character prediction would require a significant amount of development effort for what is not really that huge a gain. Also development of pinyinput has slowed somewhat since I switched to a Mac.

Oh, I didn't read your posts carefully. I thought you had written something that was based on an existing IME. I think that would be the most easy way of doing it. The regular IMEs are designed to help you get character-based output, and presumably there exists some dictionaries for these IMEs that hold the pinyin with tones.

Out of curiosity, how do you do this on the Mac? Which IME do you use?