How to type Hán Nôm characters?

 

Typing Instructions

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.  

 

  1. WinVNkey control panel → charset: select Unicode, Delivery Style: select Automatic or Clipboard.

  2. 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.

  3. WinVNkey control panel → VN icon menu (top left corner) → Type Hán Nôm.  A Hán Nôm List dialog appears.

  4. 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.

  1. 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.  

  1. 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.  

  2. Note that the word you have just selected will have its color changed  to green.

 

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Hán Nôm Typing Syntax

<Vietnamese Word><Selector><Choice Label>

 

Example:   ai/2

 

 

 

Options

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:

 

Set Font:

This allows users to change font and size of Hán Nôm characters in the dialog.

 

Change Selector:

This menu displays a dialog that will allow the user to customize the Hán Nôm selector.   By default the selector is the forward slash (/).

 

Show WinVNkey panel:

This option displays the main WinVNkey control panel.

 

Hide WinVNkey panel:

This option hides the main WinVNkey control panel.

 

Other options will be available in the next release.

 

 

How to correct a wrong Hán Nôm character selection

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.

 

 

 

 

How to recall previous Vietnamese words

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.

 

 

 

How to suppress Hán Nôm conversion

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.

 

How to type Hán Nôm characters that do not appear in the dialog?

To do ...