Comments on: Typing Proper Pinyin on Mac

By: sara

sara — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 23:55:29 +0000

A question about Pinyin in InDesign - as this seems to be a great resource. I have a manuscript that is set in Pinyin in a word document. When I import it to InDesign, it does not display properly.

Any words of advice? I am totally new to typsetting Pinyin.

By: Alan Lau

Alan Lau — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 10:58:25 +0000

This is a great tip. I've been finding this for a long time. Now, I can simply type proper pinyin on my Mac without having to write them on after I printed the document out.

Thanks!

By: James Barras (章衛)

James Barras (章衛) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 17:26:38 +0000

I created an hanyu pinyin input method called JB hanyu pinyin beta 0.1 (章衛漢語拼音 beta 0.1 in chinese) for OpenVanilla. Though It still a beta (I should say an alpha), it may be useful to some people. Using it, you can directly type hanyu pinyin with accentuation.

For instance, to output wǒ you only have to type w + o + spacebar + 3. For wō it’s pretty much the same : type w + o + spacebar + 1.

You can download the CIN file there http://www.regie-barras.ch/james/ To install it you must put the file jbhanyupinyin.cin into ~/Library/OpenVanilla/0.8/UserSpace/OVIMGeneric/ and then activate it on the preferences panel of OpenVanilla as you would do for other input methods.

If any question feel free to contact me. Good luck!

James

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 05:52:06 +0000

I can't thank you enough!

I knew it was possible, but I didn't know the details.

I've been studying Chinese for the past two years, I'm in China at the moment. It is true, you must memorize the pinyin, it is the only way to remember how to pronounce the words!

If at times your progress is slow and you feel disheartened, cheer up! Chinese is extremely difficult!

The key is to put in a little effort everyday.

Keep it up!

By: Gary

Gary — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:42:38 +0000

I could just KISS you right now! Er, but I don’t kiss dudes so I’ll just say “thanks, you’re a lifesaver!” Anyway, I’m using “Genius” freeware (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/13938 because it helps me alot in my studying of mandarin words and phrases but first I have to enter all the stuff in Pinyin and I’ve been trying for a while now to figure out how the hell to type in Pinyin. Thanks!

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 10:36:50 +0000

Thank you so much!

Something I did to help the typing of pinyin go faster was switch my option key and command key in the Keyboard Preferences and clicking Modifier Keys. This way I can hold down the command key with my right thumb while my left hand hits the appropriate tone key. Warning! This could really confuse you if you don't know what you are doing. If anyone thinks of a better way, let me know. Another thing I noticed was that the pinyin characters look best with a Monaco font; which is default in the Textpad, but with the default Times New Roman in other programs the pinyin looks tacky.

By: 小罗

小罗 — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 18:00:54 +0000

The other thing that is really nice, if you hit caps lock you can type English, and turning it off again puts you back into characters. Very slick.

By: paul

paul — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 06:52:30 +0000

One further thing to keep in mind with both the pinyin and hanzi input methods is the double accented “U” – i.e. ǚ – ）pronounced “eeoo” as in “nǚ” (女).

With both methods you have to type a “V” insted of a “U” to get the double accent or the correct hanzi. This seemed to be common knowledge to my chinese friend.

By: paul

paul — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 06:24:00 +0000

不客气！！！

By: 小罗

小罗 — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 06:17:10 +0000

这是很好！我喜欢 “vertical” 和 ”Show Associated Words” 是有趣的。现在我用这。 Paul谢谢你！