Pinyinput - Type Pinyin with Tone Marks

[St3ph0n]

Imron,

Thank you very much for writing this! It is much easier than any other method I have tried. How does the program determine which character to place the tone mark over? Surely such a small file couldn't contain every word, or even every deviation.

I have a question for you- I was going to share this program with my mandarin professor at Northeastern University, who saw me using it and was curious. Is this okay? I am unsure what he would do with it. But, if he persuaded the University to use or reference it, then you would be at least credited. Or perhaps even receive a donation on behalf of the language department .

Thanks,

Steve

[imron]

Hi Steve,

For Hanyu Pinyin there are rules that specify which vowel to place the tone over. These are:

1. If there is more than one vowel and the first vowel is i, u, or ü, then the tone mark appears on the second vowel.

2. In all other cases, the tone mark appears on the first vowel

Pinyinput contains a table of all valid combinations of pinyin initials and finals (only about 400 in total) and then calculates which vowel to place the tone mark over based on the above rules.

You're more than welcome to share it with other people and you may also wish to direct them to this thread for a full explanation of the IME.

Donations are also always welcome, and may even encourage me to finally getting around to fixing up a couple of outstanding problems

[DodgeboyDad]

Hi, I've been using Pinyinput for a couple months now and am a beginner Chinese student. When I type using Pinyinput, the font reverts to simsun when the basic font in my Word document is Arial.  I have to highlight the pinyin afterward and change it to Arial.  Also, occasionally, other areas of a document will change font to simsun when I add pinyin at an earlier point in the document.  I have tried to change the font in Pinyinput to other fonts but Arial is not on the list of available fonts.  When I change a font in Pinyinput it only seems to change the font used while I am writing it, not how it is saved once I insert the phrase into the overall document.

I'm using XP sp3 and MS Word 2003.

Can anyone help?

Thanks.

BTW, my teacher is now using Pinyinput to create handouts. She says it's awesome and a great time saver (she was applying intonation by hand after printing English).

[imron]

I'm using XP sp3 and MS Word 2003.

Can anyone help?

Unfortunately not. This is a "feature" of Word that detects which language the IME is set to, and then automatically changes the font to the default font for that language. Pinyinput sets the IME language to Chinese (so that it appears in the Chinese section of the language bar), so Word will try to be helpful and automatically set the font to a Chinese one if it detects a character outside the standard English alphabet.

[JenniferW]

I've just downloaded and stated using this - and it feels like there's just been a miracle!

Up till now I've been using the MDBG pinyin window, and it's fine - but I have to be online to use it, which isn't always feasible.

Thank you SOOOOOOOOOOOOO much for doing this!

This is the second thing Chinese-forums.com has turned up for me which is making my studies seriously feel easier - being introduced to ANKI was the other one.

[roddy]

Anyone looking for Pinyinput for Mac - peekay has produced a Mac equivalent, MacPinyin.

[chrix]

hey roddy, a question, I might have missed an update, though I downloaded it only a couple weeks ago: I can't seem to get it to write 略 correctly. AFAIK, it should be lüè right? But it keeps refusing to let me input it that way.

Edit: Imron, sorry, I got confused about who developed pinyinput. My apologies.

Edited May 26, 2009 at 03:04 AM by chrix

[imron]

Confirmed. Not sure why this is the case, i'll have a look into it. In the meantime, you can manually type it in by switching to unchecked mode. (ctrl-.)

[chrix]

ok. you don't have to switch into unchecked mode. Just type "lv" and then "e" with the corresponding tone mark

[muyongshi]

Well Imron, looks like I finally get to try this out. My work has just been pushed into a pretty much windows only environment since so now I have the bloody hassle of restarting my computer all the time but as I have been making sure I have everything I need to work, I remembered you and pinyinput. And here I never thought I would have to use your wonderful product just because I was avoiding windows....

[phillthorpe]

Hi there

Thanks for this, its great!

But I have one problem, I cant seem to find a way to type any tones with the letter i,

or u with a third tone eg:

ni

wu

I know there is obviously a way, but I cant see it. Can you explain or point

me in the direction of a help file or something that explains how to use this.

Thanks again

Phill.

[imron]

It seems to work fine for me by typing ni3 or wu3. Can you describe in more detail what happens when you type those letter/number combinations?

[phillthorpe]

Sorry Imron

What was happening was when I take my chinese lessons I save the text and one week

I saved it with wordpad, the next time I saved with Open Office Writer.

Then I open up the Open Office file and started a new file, then your program works.

The next time I opened up the wordpad file and started a new file and your

program didnt work. My system is giving both file types the same logo so I didnt

realize what was happening untill just now. hahahha

Thanks for your speedy response, and sorry for wasting your time.

regards

Phill.

[crazy-meiguoren]

Imron, I really do appreciate the pinyinput software. It helps me a lot, since nǐ hǎo is much easier on the eyes than ni3 hao3.

I've also told someone who teaches Chinese classes in the community about it, too. She appreciated it very much, and uses it in typing out her lessons.

Kudos to peekay for creating a Mac version. I don't use a Mac, but anyone who takes the effort to make a useful tool available across all platforms deserves just as much credit.

Someone wanted a Linux version. I don't know how to write an IME on any platform. If I did, I have a Knoppix disk that could be put to good use. Alas, while I have 30 years of programming experience, almost all of it is in Cobol, on mainframes. Not many IMEs are written in that language. Know of any good place to start?

for Imron and Peekay.

[renzhe]

Scim does a good job of inputting pinyin on Linux and similar systems., and that is what most people use to enter Chinese anyway.

[ABCinChina]

Hey guys, I'm back in USA and bought a new computer with vista 64-bit and pinyinput doesn't work anymore. Is this a known issue?

[imron]

It's never really been tested under vista (either 32-bit or 64-bit) as I don't have access to a Vista machine.

[Beijing Sounds]

Hi Imron, I was going to note that I'd just blogged about how great Pinyinput is while making a minor note that it doesn't accept lüè as valid Pinyin.

But now that I've quit being so lazy and searched the comments I see that Chrix has beat me to both problem note and solution.

So I'll just turn this into an unqualified mash letter about how I really don't know how I survived before Pinyinput. Indispensable tool. Thanks!

[muyongshi]

It's never really been tested under vista (either 32-bit or 64-bit) as I don't have access to a Vista machine.

It works on 32 bit.

[jslee]

Just as a note on 64-bit it will work, but it tells me that it will only work on 32-bit programs.

Could you rebuild it on 64-bit or something like that?