Hán Nôm (Chinese characters and classic Vietnamese characters) are available in Unicode charset only. Suppose you want to type the Hán Nôm character that sounds "ai" in Vietnamese.
For this purpose you must first check if you can type Unicode in your application at all. Notepad in Windows 2000 is certainly working with Unicode. Suppose also your system already has font "Arial Unicode MS", which supports Hán Nôm characters.
WinVNkey control panel → charset: select Unicode, Delivery Style: select Automatic or Clipboard.
WinVNkey control panel → Options: in the "Basic Options" group, check the box for "Type Vietnamese characters" and deselect "Type foreign characters." Click OK to return to the main control panel.
WinVNkey control panel → VN icon menu (top left corner) → Type Hán Nôm. A Hán Nôm List dialog appears.
In your application, say Notepad, choose font "Arial Unicode MS", then type ai/ (that is, 3 characters a, i, and a slash). The slash is called the Hán Nôm selector because it helps select a word.
Note that as soon as you type the slash, the Hán Nôm List dialog shows a list of words numbered 0, 1, 2, etc. The first word is always the original Vietnamese word, which is always numbered 0. The other words are Hán or Nôm characters which are pronounced in the same way as the Roman-based Vietnamese word "ai" but may have different meanings. You must be able to recognize these characters in order to choose the correct Hán Nôm character.
If you choose word number 1, just type 1 immediately after the slash, say ai/1.
If you choose word number 2, type ai/2.
If you type ai/0, you get the original Vietnamese word; it is a way to undo the slash. The choices 0, 1, 2, etc are called choice label.
Alternatively, instead of typing 0, 1, 2, etc, you can use the mouse to click on the appropriate Hán Nôm character in the Hán Nôm List dialog.
Note that the word you have just selected will have its color changed to green.
Step1.
Step 2.
Step 4.
<Vietnamese Word><Selector><Choice Label>
Example: ai/2
Selector: a special character that follows a Vietnamese word to trigger a list of Hán Nôm characters to be displayed in a dialog. It is usually the forward slash but can be changed. See below.
Choice label: a special character that follows a selector to select a particular entry in the Hán Nôm dialog. It is usually a digit from 0 through 9 or a letter from a through z. A choice label is valid if it is within the range shown in the Hán Nôm list dialog. For instance, the Vietnamese word "ai" offers three choice labels 0, 1, 2 as shown in the picture above.
If a wrong choice label is typed in, no Hán Nôm character will be selected. In this case the sequence of characters just typed in becomes normal characters. For instance, typing "ai/4" will display exactly as "ai/4", no characters are special.
The Hán Nôm List dialog is designed to be resizable. For now the list of Hán Nôm characters are displayed in a column (vertical) format only. Future releases will allow an option to display in a row (horizontal) format. Other options currently available are as follows:
This allows users to change font and size of Hán Nôm characters in the dialog.
This menu displays a dialog that will allow the user to customize the Hán Nôm selector. By default the selector is the forward slash (/).
This option displays the main WinVNkey control panel.
This option hides the main WinVNkey control panel.
Other options will be available in the next release.
You can click on the downward arrow of the Select button, then select Backspace to erase the Hán Nôm word just selected. The Hán Nôm list is still displayed in the dialog. All you need to do is select another word by the mouse. If you click on "Select All", all the Hán Nôm characters in the list will get selected and appear in your application.
Note that this method may not work with all delivery style. If it does not work, go back to the main WinVNkey control panel and select a different delivery style.
Up to 16 previous words are stored in the combo box. You can recall any word by using the mouse to select it and clicking on the appropriate Hán Nôm character.
Suppose you want to type "Quan/1" and do not want this to be replaced with a Hán Nôm character. The solution is to use an escape character. Note that the default escape character is the backward slash \.
Note that the selector / is a special character in "Quan/1" because it represents an action, not a regular character. Preceding the slash with an escape character makes the slash a normal character. Thus typing Quan\/1 will display Quan/1.
An alternative method is to escape 1. The digit 1 is special because it follows the selector / immediately. Preceding 1 with an escape character makes 1 no longer special. Thus typing Quan/\1 will display Quan/1.
To do ...