How to type pinyin text with tone marks in Windows?

Question

How do I type Chinese pinyin text with the tone marks into any application in Windows?

I am aware of the Chinese IME in Windows, which converts pinyin text I type into the Chinese stroked characters. This is not what I want. I want to type and view pinyin text, like rì chū for example, with all the proper tone marks (diacritics).

Solution 1

The U.S. international keyboard that comes with Windows makes typing some accents easy, but apparently not macrons (the bar over the "u" in "chū"). The Māori keyboard has support for those; maybe you can hot switch between the two? Someone claimed to have made a derivative of the international keyboard that permits typing the macrons as well as other accents easily, but I haven't tried it out.

You could try using a tone converter that takes in numeric-based tones and spits out accent-based tones.

Edit:

I found an explicitly pinyin keyboard layout that should do what you want.

Solution 2

May I suggest my own PinyinTones IME, which does exactly what the OP was looking for:

• https://www.pinyintones.com/

It's a Windows IME that outputs Pinyin with tone marks, rather than Chinese characters. Type 1, 2, 3, or 4 after each syllable to add a tone mark -- just as people have been entering Pinyin since the days of ASCII characters:

Key features:

1. Uses the Text Services Framework, so it works everywhere that the Microsoft Pinyin IME works. Including desktop and Universal applications.

2. Uses in-line text composition, just like the Microsoft IMEs. This means that it behaves well in TSF-aware applications -- for example, when inserting, text will reflow as you type.

3. Automatically places tone marks on the correct vowel in a combination, according to the rules of Pinyin orthography. (e.g., hao3 becomes hǎo -- with the tone mark on the "a" rather than on the "o")

Solution 3

You can use the Keyboard Layout Creator to create such a keyboard layout yourself. Off the top of my head I don't know a layout which enables you to type all the tones. As Bkkbrad mentioned, you can't type a macron on US International (which is what I'm using here). But modifying US International to add another dead key for macron shouldn't be too hard.

Solution 4

I've used a couple but in the end I went with QuickPinyin because it's the only one that didn't need to be installed. This is kind of cool because I can run from a USB stick on any PC, for example, the library computers which don't let me install software on them.

Solution 5

I came across the same problem today while trying to set up my Windows installation. There is a much better solution under Linux using ibus. Namely, you can set the output to traditional, simplified, or pinyin. This way you can take advantage of the built in recognition algorithms - they place the tone mark on the correct vowel, etc. It would be great if someone has a similar solution for Windows.

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Comments

[Ben Turner]

By the time you shared this keyboard layout, I took your earlier advice and created my own layout: qishi.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/pinyin-keyboard-layout :-)

[Bkkbrad]

Fortune favors the bold! Nice job.

[Don Kirkby]

The ibus solution sounds good, but I can't find any documentation of it. I only see the Simplified and Traditional output options and no pinyin output under Ubuntu 11.10. Do you know if it's documented anywhere?

[fostandy]

What does this do when you press the TAB key? In notepad it seems to defer tabbing until you press enter. When you're in a combo box it seems to make it impossible to change focus using your keyboard. Is this a standard IME 'feature' and if so what is the purpose of it?

[MichaelChirico]

@AshwinNanjappa your wordpress has been deleted. Any new place to find your layout?

[NaturalBornCamper]

Also, it's constantly in "insert" mode, so you cannot move the cursor to the middle of a sentence, it will overwrite any following characters

[davidtbernal]

I found a new link for the pinyin keyboard layout here: robrohan.com/2007/02/18/…

[Finiox]

For users using the link from @davidtbernal make sure you enable "Compatability mode" for .msi installer otherwise it won't work on Windows 10+ URL: robrohan.com/2007/02/18/…