Copyright (c) 1992-2005, The TriChlor Software Group
Author: Học Ðình Ngô
Version 5.0: February 20, 2005
RC 1 Revision: November 23, 2004
Beta 3 Revision: January 14, 2003
Beta 2 Revision: August 29, 2002
First release: August 23, 2002
WinVNKey 4.x/5.x is a 32-bit system software tool that allows typing Vietnamese and multilingual characters in most existing Windows applications such as Windows 95, 98, ME and NT 3.5X, NT 4.0, 2000, XP, etc.
Starting with WinVNKey 4 beta3 the software is released in three packages::
Windows 95
Windows 98/ME
Windows NT (for all NT-based Windows such as NT 3.X, NT 4, Windows 2000, Windows XP).
All packages are 32-bit and are upward compatible; i.e.,
package 1 for Windows 95 can also run on Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP.
package 2 for Windows 98/ME can also run on Windows NT/2000/XP, but cannot run on Windows 95.
package 3 for Windows NT cannot run on Windows 95/98/ME.
Because of operating system constraints, package 1 is less powerful than package 2, and package 2 less powerful than package 3. Thus although package 1 can also run on NT, you should use package 3 on an NT machine to fully take advantage of the power of the operating system.
WinVNKey 4.x/5.x is a major upgrade from version 3.0. Among its main features are the following:
Elegant User Interface
Intuitive user interface switchable to English (default) or Vietnamese.
User can customize the interface in any language easily by translating a text file (see Vietnamese.ini or English.ini) and rename the file after the language (e.g., German.ini for German). The new language will appear in the list of languages in the Preferences dialog automatically.
Dialogs support Unicode input and display on NT-based systems (NT 3.x/4, 2000, XP).
Dialogs support Unicode display only on 16-bit Windows systems (Windows 95/98/ME). User can switch to any 8-bit character set, including Unicode Numerical Character Representation (NCR), when typing text into text boxes in dialogs.
List boxes and edit boxes support right mouse click to display a drop-down menu that offers the capability to change fonts, delete files, rename files, help, etc.
Many dialogs are resizable to provide large viewing area.
Many tabbed pages are scrollable to provide more details.
Many static text controls are also hyperlink to a new dialog or help. Help presented this way always appears in the language currently chosen for the user interface.
Supports WinVNKey icon on the task bar tray:
Left click on the icon to toggle combining mode, which also changes the icon image.
Double click to maximize WinVNKey
Right click to see the state of WinVNKey or to restore/exit WinVNKey.
Move the mouse over it for a second or two to display a summary.
Multilingual Character Sets
Supports almost all Vietnamese character sets known so far.
Supports five new extended character sets for typing Vietnamese in native Windows codepage:
Vietnamese in ASCII, Windows 1250, Windows 1252: the user can type any acccented Vietnamese characters but WinVNKey will ignore all accent marks that would produce characters not available in the said character sets (e.g. for Windows codepage 1252, typing ta^'n gives tân, the acute accent was ignored).
VIQR in Windows 1250, Windows 1252: when the user types any accented Vietnamese character, WinVNKey will try to use all accented characters that available in the said character sets before giving up and using standard VIQR accent marks (e.g. typing a^' gives â' because â is available in Windows codepage 1250/1252).
Supports over 40 foreign character code pages.
Also supports PHAPCHAT character set commonly used by Vietnamese monks to type Pali.
Typing foreign characters, including Pinying, is supported by macros.
Conversion is supported from any code page to any code page that is available in WinVNKey.
Macros defined in one code page also work in other code pages if the characters are available.
Improved Unicode Support
Typing true 16-bit Unicode characters using up to five methods of delivery depending on the operating system: clipboard with SHIFT-INSERT, clipboard with CTRL-V, regular, simulation, Unicode. This capability accommodates almost all Unicode-aware applications.
Supports Unicode in Numerical Character Representation (NCR) frequently used in HTML:
Hexadecimal NCR (e.g. ạ appears as ạ)
Decimal NCR (e.g. ạ appears as ạ)
The user has a choice to convert characters greater than 127 or 255 into NCR by selecting an appropriate character set:
U8HN -- Unicode in 8 bits and Hexadecimal NCR (i.e., If Unicode characters fit in 8-bits or less, display them in 8-bit bytes; otherwirse, display them in Hexadecimal NCR)
U8DN -- Unicode in 8 bits and Decimal NCR
U7HN -- Unicode in 7 bits and Hexadecimal NCR (i.e., If Unicode characters fit in 7-bits or less, display them in ASCII; otherwirse, display them in Hexadecimal NCR)
U7DN -- Unicode in 7 bits and Decimal NCR
User can launch Microsoft or WinVNKey Character Map to help selecting Unicode characters and then copying them to edit boxes. The WinVNKey Character Map is still in development.
Rich Typing Methods
Five keyboard typing modes compatible with MacVNkey.
Seven flexible typing methods: VIQR, VIQR variants, VNI, VPS, Telex, etc.
User can define new typing methods as well.
All typing methods are stored as plain text files so that they can be exchanged easily.
User can type $$ to get the Vietnamese currency symbol ₫ if the character set has it (VNI, Unicode)
Capability to manipulate tone marks only (erase, retrieve, bind).
Typing the same mark again undoes the mark.
Option to allow typing a space before an accent mark to avoid combination; the space will be discarded.
User can prevent accent mark combination by typing an escape char or pressing and releasing a CTRL key just before typing an accent mark (e.g. to get a': type a, type escape char or press and release CTRL key, type ')
Smart Vietnamese Combination
Type mark immediately after a letter
Type mark at the end of a word
Type mark anywhere in a syllable
Combine mark if it forms a Viet syllable of a monosyllable word
Combine mark if the word is pronounceable in Vietnamese
Combine mark if the word spelling is correct
Uncombine mark if the syllable or word becomes non Vietnamese.
Autochange consonants before vowel (qe ->que,nge -> nghe)
Autochange consonants after vowel (bag ->bang, cah -> canh)
Quick syllables (ii -> iê, yy -> yê)
Undo combination/macro simply by pressing and release the right SHIFT key.
Support dead keys: users can turn dead keys into normal keys so that they can type accent marks after base letters.
Powerful Macro Capabilities
Typing all foreign characters and symbols,
Typing Unicode characters
Typing Han Nom characters with the help of a dialog assistant
Remapping indisplayable characters on the fly (to lower case for VISCII, VPS, DHBK1, etc)
Two levels of autoexpansion macros.
Auto correcting characters (nhửng changed to những)
Expanding shorthands (xh changed to xã hội)
Fast Vietnamese typing by defining auto expansion macros for frequently used syllables
Long macros are processed before short macros (e.g. Pinying macro "VE5 " is processed before "E5")
Converting numbers to characters ("�x41/" changed to "A", helpful for typing Unicode characters)
Converting characters to number (A# changed to 0x41, helpful for programmers)
Macros are displayed in true Unicode characters even in 16-bit operating systems such as Windows 95/98/ME.
Macros can be defined in any character set and are made available in all other character sets.
Typing Han Nom Characters
The Han database comes from Thieu Chuu dictionary, version 1.5 (courtesy of Vuong Doan Nguyen), which has 9005 characters and no surrogates (double Unicode codepoints in Extension B).
The Nom database comes from UniHan plain text database of the Unicode Consortium and from an unofficial database, courtesy of Quoc-Bao Do. It consists of 9311 characters, 4233 of which are surrogates.
Users can type Han Nom characters in any application that supports Unicode such as Office 2000 or later, Notepad 2000 or later, Wordpad 2000 or later. This is done by typing the Vietnamese word followed by a slash and a number (e.g. bát/1) to choose the first character from the list of Han characters.
The Han Nom Manager dialog has menu that links to many Han Nom websites.
Han/Nom text database is included to allow users to edit/add/delete and rebuild the binary database.
Users can change their system registry settings for surrogate fonts via a preference dialog.
Powerful Conversion Capabilities
Converting RTF files based on font names. The user specifies the font mapping to tell WinVNKey what source fonts are to be converted to what destination fonts. WinVNKey provides a number of predefined mappings for user's convenience. The source file can contain fonts from multiple character sets.
Converting plain-text documents typed in different character sets
Converting plain-text documents to RTF files
RTF conversion uses character set mappings in plain text file.
Offers dialogs to help users change/add/delete mapping files either to correct mapping errors or support new character sets.
Offers dialog to help users determine if a font is regular, capital, or all capital font.
Automatically switches to capital fonts when destination fonts are from single-byte character sets and the text involved cannot be displayed in the regular fonts.
WinVNKey can guess the character set based on least spelling error count.
The source and destination can be file or clipboard. Multiple files can be converted at the same time.
Conversion is supported for all Vietnamese and foreign character sets listed in the dialog. User can convert from any character set to any other character set.
Support typing foreign characters that are available in VPS fonts, VNI fonts, etc.
Support conversion from VNI to Unicode and vice versa for Latin-based characters from score of languages. Thus in case where Unicode is not available, the user can use VNI charset and 8-bit VNI fonts to type multilingual chars in the same document without switching charsets and fonts.
Smart conversion for Vietnamese to foreign character set to preserve the most similar looking accented characters. For example, the letter ấ will become â, not a, when converted to Windows code page 1252.
Tone Mark Lookup
Look-up of common Vietnamese words with the hook above (?) or tilde (~) tone mark
User can use this capability when working in any Vietnamese character set.
Hot Key Support
User can define up to 144 hot keys to change WinVNKey settings without going through the user interface. The user can use hot keys to change keyboard mode, charset, typing method, Viet option page, macros, languages, etc.
Dead Key Support
User can turn all dead keys into normal keys, for keyboards with dead keys, so that accent marks can be conveniently typed after base letters.
Convenience and Portability
Convenient links to several web sites such as WinVNKey forum and home page, TriChlor, VietStd, VietUnicode.
Convenient mailing list subscription and unsubscription.
This help document is written in Unicode (UTF-8) characters with Arial fonts. A number of international characters cannot display correctly unless your system has Arial font version 2.82. If you see characters appear as empty square boxes, you should consider a font upgrade. This software is designed primarily for Vietnamese users. Hence, foreign language is meant any language other than Vietnamese.