Typing pinyin?

[digmen1]

Yes I would like to be able to type Pinyin with the proper accents. The tools mentioned here do seem to work, but they would tend to be very slow having to cut and paste all of the time.

Why is it not possible to find a font that allows you to use on Windows XP the technique I used when typing French accents of using the Alt key then typing a number on the numeric keypad. Eg alt 225 gave a letter a with a French accent.

Regards

Digby

[Lugubert]

Why is it not possible to find a font that allows you to use on Windows XP the technique I used when typing French accents of using the Alt key then typing a number on the numeric keypad. Eg alt 225 gave a letter a with a French accent.

If you get a Greek beta when trying Alt-225 in a font, it's probably Unicode. Then try Alt-0225.

[digmen1]

As I mentioned above I think it would be nice to be able to input pinyin characters using the numeric keypad.

I am now able to input charahcters such as acute a á going with Alt 0225, and acute e é with Alt 0233, using my normal Times New Roman font on windows XP.

But how do I get the characters eg a with a macron, tone 1, eg 0101 Alt+X on the Insert/Symbol menu ? I have tried every way I can, and just cannot get these characters to come up. What does Alt+X mean ? how do you use it

Do you have to create your own symbol short cut ? I can do this but do not want to if there is a standard way.

Regards

Digby

PS Great forum, so much activity compared to others I looked at.

[Lugubert]

Write 0101 and hit Alt + X. The numbers are automagically transformed into the ā.

[digmen1]

Lugbert

That works perfectly !

I did not think it would have, but it does.

You little smilie is "Mr Green" that is my surname ! (second name) (last name) ie my name is Digby Green

Thanks for that.

[cs_mcl]

The link should be http://www.foolsworkshop.com/easytone/

Works great. Courier is the clearer font.

For example to have "a" in the first tone you type "

2nd is ">a"

3rd is "[a"

4th is "]a"

No cut and pasting which is great thing about it. There is a help file with these fonts for more detailed info.

[imron]

But a bad idea for anyone who needs to use { or }. Not to mention the fact that anyone you send you documents to won't be able to see the pinyin unless they also have the same fonts installed. Given the widespread support of Unicode in all modern OSes, there are far better methods available. See for example the link in my signature.

[laozitu]

For text documents, including HTML, I have written a Perl script which converts numerical tones to unicode characters (not the combining diacritical). For example,

Zhong1guo2 is converted to Zhōngguó. It can be used from the command line (Unix or Windows) and from with the Vim editor. If anyone is interested, I can post it or send it along.

[Stefani]

Use Imron's Pinyinput.

[laozitu]

A very nifty tool indeed! I like it a lot and will use it when I'm typing new stuff in a Windows environment. Nǐ kàn. Zhè zhǒng ruǎnjiàn fēicháng yǒu yòng!

[hunxueer]

on a related note, does anybody know any attractive fonts that display pinyin? apparently you can use arial, times new roman, or lucida sans, but they're all kind of ugly. so far it looks like vista's microsoft yahei looks the best but it appears to have only a bold option, no normal one. tips, anyone?

[Josh2007]

I find that Arial Unicode MS displays PINGYING much better than normal Arial does.

[imagine]

I've used www.mdbg.net for typing pinyin.It allows to "type pīnyīn without the help of Chinese text input utilities or operating system support. Tone marks will be placed as you type, just type 'ni3hao3, pin1yin1' and 'nǐhǎo, pīnyīn' will appear. To change a tone, just type another number and the previous tone will be replaced".

You'll find "type pinyin" on the first page, in the middle, on the left side... works perfectly for me.

[hunxueer]

yes, all unicode fonts should display tone-marked pinyin just fine, but so far i know of only four:

arial unicode

lucida sans unicode

courier

times new roman

does anybody know of any others? especially a modern, sans serif, clean-looking font? microsoft yahei seemed close but it's a bit bold.

[bournekaloyan]

My Chinese teacher told me that I need to work on my Pinyin tones, it's pretty difficult. I was looking through internet for some exercise for this purpose.

I have a Mac. It turns out that there are many cool and free learning Pinyin tools out there. This is the one you should check out if you are bad with Chinese tones like me:

http://pinyin.quickmandarin.com/

They have Chinese Pinyin quiz. They will play a sound and ask you what tone it is... really neat.

P.S.There is also a Pinyin table, the site claims containing all Chinese Pinyin sound(is it possible?).

[Manuel]

Try this:

QuickPinyin