Typing around the world

How to get Keyman Desktop 8 working in Windows 8 Consumer Preview

While Keyman Desktop 8.0 runs fine with traditional Windows applications, by default it will not run with Metro-style applications in Windows 8, due to added security restrictions. These restrictions prevent the Keyman Engine from reading settings and keyboards when switching to a Keyman Desktop keyboard in a Metro-style application.

In due course Tavultesoft will release an update to Keyman Desktop which resolves this problem completely. In the meantime, the following steps will allow you to use your Keyman Desktop keyboards within Metro-style applications:

1. Start Registry Editor, and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Tavultesoft.
2. Select Edit|Permissions..., click Add... and type ALL APPLICATION PACKAGES and click OK.
3. Ensure Full Control is ticked, and click OK
4. Press Windows Key+R and type %AppData% into the Window/Run dialog that appears, and click OK
5. Right-click on Tavultesoft in the folder and select Properties, select the Security tab, and click Edit....
6. Click Add..., type ALL APPLICATION PACKAGES and click OK. Ensure Read & execute is ticked, and click OK, and OK again.

You may need to close and restart all your Metro-style apps and Keyman Desktop itself in order for this procedure to take effect.

The Future of Ancient Egyptian — Typing in Hieroglyphs

Have you ever wanted to type in Egyptian hieroglyphs? Today we've released a keyboard which will let you do just that. Christian Casey's Unicode Hieroglyphic keyboard allows you to type Ancient Egyptian on the web and in any application with full Unicode support.

Ancient Signs

Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs have a history of use spanning some 4,000 years, from the late Roman empire back to the 3rd millennium BC, which means they share the distinction with Sumerian cuneiform of being older than any other known writing system. For most of their long history, hieroglyphs were usually used for monumental writing and inscriptions. They could be written left-to-right (like English), right-to-left (like Hebrew), or top-to-bottom (like Mongolian), with reading direction indicated by the direction of the faces (you read into the faces, as if conversing with them).

The Ancient Egyptians used hieroglyphs somewhat similarly to modern Japanese. Some signs indicate sounds (like for the 'ch' in loch), some signs indicate entire words (like  for 'flamingo'), some signs explain the reading of other signs (like to mark a word feminine), and most signs can be read in more than one way. In an effort to make writing aesthetically more beautiful and reading clearer(!), scribes would combine and repeat sound, word, and marker signs to create redundancies when making a word. For example, the word 'birds' can be written  , which is made up of the signs for the sounds in the word birds (  = ꜣpdw), together with the marker for bird ( ) and the marker for plural (). Attractive? Yes. Efficient? Maybe not.

Cutting-edge Keyboard

Designing a method to type Ancient Egyptian on computers is no easy task, made all the harder by the fact that the Unicode standard didn't admit hieroglyphs until October 2010, in version 6.0. Because of the size and scope of the task, until now the two primary ways to work with hieroglyphs on computers were a) as images or b) in dedicated hieroglyphic text-editors. There was no easy way to type hieroglyphs in, say, an email, a website, a Word document, an Excel spreadsheet, or an Adobe document. The new Hieroglyphic keyboard fills that gap. It allows you to type hundreds of hieroglyphs in all of those situations and more.

The Hieroglyphic keyboard allows you to type Ancient Egyptian in three ways:

• Transliteration using the Manuel de Codage standard
• Hieroglyphs using the Manuel de Codage standard
• Hieroglyphs using Gardiner's Sign List numbers

The keyboard automatically types in transliteration using the Manuel de Codage (MdC) standard transliteration system. Then, the keyboard converts transliteration to hieroglyphs each time you press spacebar. Pressing spacebar repeatedly cycles through signs which sound the same. Pressing ctrl+spacebar lets you output a space or stop transliteration from becomming hieroglyphs.

You can also output hieroglyphs with this keyboard using their Gardiner number. The Gardiner numbers come from a comprehensive set of sign lists generated in the early part of the last century by the eminent British egyptologist, Sir Alan Gardiner. Together with the MdC method, the Gardiner numbers make it easy to quickly access hundreds of standard hieroglyphs.

Try it Out

Download the new Hieroglyphics keyboard for Keyman Desktop on Microsoft Windows.

You can type Egyptian Hieroglyphics directly into your web browser, no download required, at our KeymanWeb Egyptian Hieroglyphic Online Keyboard page.  You can even embed this into your own website!

A New Site for Ge'ez

To make it even easier to find all our Ge'ez (Ethiopic) script keyboards, we’ve built a new Ge'ez minisite. In addition to 9 Ge'ez language keyboards, the site includes a FAQ with font help and links to our partner application, GeezWord.

Writing Ge'ez

Ge'ez is an ancient writing system from the horn of Africa. It was born hundreds of years B.C. as an abjad (like Hebrew) and gradually became an abugida (like Hindi).

Today, the Ge'ez script is used by nearly 25 million people in Ethiopia, Eritrea and around the world. The script is most commonly used for Ethiopian Semitic languages, including Amharic and Tigrigna, but is also used for Cushitic, Omotic and Nilo-Saharan languages like Blin, Bench and Me'en.

Typing Ge'ez

The Ge'ez Frontier Foundation has crafted nine separate keyboard packages for eleven different languages:

Language	Family	Origin	Speakers
Amharic	Semitic	Ethiopia	Over 17.5 million
Awngi	Cushitic	Ethiopia	Half a million
Bench	Omotic	Ethiopia	Over 100,000
Blin	Cushitic	Eritrea	Over 90,000
Dizi	Omotic	Ethiopia	Over 20,000
Ge'ez	Semitic	Ethiopia	Extinct
Me'en	Nilo-Saharan	Ethiopia	Over 80,000
Mursi	Nilo-Saharan	Ethiopia	Over 3,000
Sebatbeit	Semitic	Ethiopia	Over 2.3 million
Suri	Nilo-Saharan	Ethiopia	Over 19,000
Tigrigna	Semitic	Ethiopia	Over 3.2 million

Each keyboard follows the same straightforward phonetic approach. Type one or more Latin letters in consistent combinations to get phonetically similar characters in any Ge'ez-script language.

Letter	መ	ሙ	ሚ	ማ	ሜ	ም	ሞ	ሟ
Type	me	mu	mi	ma	mie	m	mo	mua
Letter	ቸ	ቹ	ቺ	ቻ	ቼ	ች	ቾ	ቿ
Type	ce	cu	ci	ca	cie	c	co	cua

The characters available in each keyboard differ to provide optimal access to the letters needed by each language. For example, here's a comparison of a few characters in the Amharic, Ge'ez, and Tigrigna keyboards:

Keyboard	Characters
	ሥ	ሽ	ቕ	ቭ	ች	ኅ	ኝ	ኽ	ዥ	ጅ	ጭ	ፅ
Amharic	✔	✔		✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Ge'ez	✔											✔
Tigrigna (Eritrea)		✔	✔	✔	✔		✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Tigrigna (Ethiopia)	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔

GeezWord

GeezWord by GeezSoft is a tailored typing application for Amharic and Tigrigna built on the Keyman engine. With a focus on desktop publishing, a solid collection of Ge'ez fonts, and native language techincal support in Amharic and Tigrigna, GeezWord is a great all-in-one solution for Ge'ez writers.

Check out GeezWord and all of the Ge'ez keyboards from our new minisite.

A Page for Sinhala

As part of our roll out of minisites for feature languages, we are keen to announce a new page for Sinhala. The page gathers Sinhalese keyboards and partner applications in a single location for easy access. 

The Language

Over 15,500,000 people speak Sinhala — in the island country of Sri Lanka and around the world. Sinhala is an Indo-European language, related more directly to Indic languages like Assamese, Bengali, Hindi, and Urdu, and less directly to European languages like English, French, Greek and Russian. And yes, that means Sinhala includes all the fun gender, number, and case agreement you’d expect from an Indo-European language.

The Script

The Sinhala script descends directly from Brahmi which in turn descends from Phonecian, that great ancestor of most scripts around the world, including Arabic, Cyrillic, Ge'ez, Greek, Hebrew, and Latin.  Sinhala is an abugida (like Hindi) with two sets of characters: śuddha and miśra. Śuddha is a subset of miśra, containing all the characters required for every-day writing. Miśra contains the śuddha set plus a collection of characters for prestige and loanwords.

Śuddha Set

The Keyboards

 

• Garp Sinhala is a phonetic Keyman keyboard. Its logical design makes it intuitive to type both śuddha and miśra characters, for anyone familiar with Sinhala sounds and the QWERTY keyboard. A few characters with no exact phonetic match can be typed using c, h, v, x, or z after the most similar QWERTY character. For example, to get ණ, type: nx

 

We also list two Sinhala applications that are built by our partners with Keyman Engine technology and are available for download from our website:

• LangPlus TSE is a complete application designed for simple, multi-lingual typing in Sinhala, Tamil, and English. The Sinhala keyboard follows a nearly phonetic model which puts the primary śuddha characters on the unshifted keyboard within easiest reach. Shift and AltGr (Right Alt) give the remaining śuddha and miśra letters.

• The MyPC HelaBasa application includes high quality Sinhala fonts and a keyboard based on the official Sri Lankan Sinhala layout. The arrangement of the Sinhala characters on the keyboard has no relationship to QWERTY, originating in an age before computers as the Wijesekara typewriter standard.

All three of these solutions can be downloaded from our Sinhala keyboards minisite.  Head over to the Sinhala keyboards minisite now!

 

Activating Keyman Desktop with Windows Script

Keyman Desktop includes a comprehensive API that allows you to control nearly every aspect of its behaviour.  Today I'd like to focus on one small method of automating Keyman Desktop, that is, activating Keyman Desktop via script.

The activation process requires three steps:

1. Pass the license key in to Keyman Engine and get activation request binary data in response
2. Send this activation request binary data to the Tavultesoft activation server and receive activation response binary data in response
3. Pass the activation response binary data to Keyman Engine to complete activation

This can be done neatly with Windows Script Host.  This script could be used in a number of scenarios, including Windows Installer or Active Directory scripts.  Error management is left up to the Keyman Engine and XMLHTTPRequest objects, and any errors will abort the script.

This script does not check if Keyman Desktop is already activated.  That can easily be added using the GetProductActivationInfo function in ITavultesoftKeymanScript; there is no harm in reactivating but obviously you can save a call to the Tavultesoft activation server if you don't need to reactivate.

The script must run in x86 context, so on Windows x64 hosts, make sure you use the cscript.exe or wscript.exe script host from the SYSWOW64 folder.

If you run the script with elevated privileges, then the activation will apply for all users; otherwise the activation will only apply for the current user.

  ' =======================================================================
  '
  ' ActivationScript.vbs.
  '
  ' (C) 2012 Tavultesoft Pty Ltd
  '
  ' Author:  Marc Durdin
  ' Version: 1.0
  ' Date:    27 Feb 2012
  '
  ' For support with this script, please contact
  ' Tavultesoft Support <support@tavultesoft.com>
  '
  ' This script activates the product specified below with the license
  ' details embedded in this script.
  '
  ' The script must run in x86 context, not x64 context.
  '
  ' The script can be embedded in an .msi file, for example with a
  ' WiX custom action, wrap the code in a function called Activate()
  ' and add the following fragment to your .wxs source file:
  '
  '  <Binary Id="ActivationScript.vbs" SourceFile="ActivationScript.vbs" />
  '  
  '  <CustomAction BinaryKey="ActivationScript.vbs" Execute="deferred"
  '   Id="Activation" HideTarget="yes"
  '   Impersonate="no" Return="check"
  '   VBScriptCall="Activate" Win64="no" />
  '
  '  <InstallExecuteSequence>
  '    <Custom Action="Activation" Before="InstallFinalize" />
  '  </InstallExecuteSequence>
  '
  ' =======================================================================

  dim LicenseNumber, ProductID

  ' ================================
  ' Start of user-definable settings
  ' ================================

  '
  ' LicenseNumber - the license number you have been provided with by Tavultesoft
  '

  LicenseNumber = "1234-5678-ABCD-EFGH-IJKL"  ' This is not a valid license number!

  '
  ' ProductID:
  '   Keyman Desktop Pro 8.0 = 12
  '   Keyman Desktop Light 8.0 = 13
  '   Keyman Developer 8.0 = 14
  '   Other product IDs can be found in the registry when the product is installed,
  '   in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Tavultesoft\Keyman Engine\8.0\
  '       Installed Products\[productname]\product id
  '

  ProductID = 12  

  ' ==============================
  ' End of user-definable settings
  ' ==============================

  dim kmcom, kmcom2
  dim ActivationRequest, ActivationResponse, XMLHttpRequest, ActivationURL

  ' ========================================================================
  ' Create Tavultesoft Keyman objects.  We need both because we are using
  ' VBScript which cannot access some of the activation functions in the
  ' IKeymanProduct interface and so must use the ITavultesoftKeymanScript
  ' alternatives
  ' ========================================================================

  Set kmcom = CreateObject("kmcomapi.TavultesoftKeyman")
  Set kmcom2 = CreateObject("kmcomapi.TavultesoftKeymanScript")

  ' ========================================================================
  ' Generate an activation request blob
  ' ========================================================================

  ActivationRequest = kmcom2.GetProductActivationRequest(ProductID, LicenseNumber)

  ' ========================================================================
  ' Send the activation request blob to the Tavultesoft secure server for activation
  ' For proxy, see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms760236%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
  ' ========================================================================

  ActivationURL = "https://secure.tavultesoft.com/prog/70/activation.php"
  Set XMLHTTPRequest = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP.6.0")
  XMLHTTPRequest.open "POST", ActivationURL, FALSE
  XMLHTTPRequest.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
  XMLHTTPRequest.send "ActivationRequestBlob="+ActivationRequest

  ' ========================================================================
  ' Collect the activation response blob from the response and pass it into the
  ' kmcom IKeymanProduct.Activate function to complete the activation.  Activation will
  ' be per-user for a local user security context, or per-machine for an elevated
  ' security context.
  ' ========================================================================

  ActivationResponse = XMLHTTPRequest.responseText
  kmcom.Products.ItemsByProductID(ProductID).Activate(ActivationResponse)

  ' EOF

ActivatedState = km.GetProductActivationInfo(ProductID, 1)
IF ActivatedState = 0

Debugging the non-functional Enter key in Chrome

We have had a number of reports of the Enter key not working in Chrome while Keyman Desktop is active.  I took on the task of investigating this issue and here's how it panned out.  Note: this post will be quite technical so if that doesn't interest you, do feel free to skip it!

I started by reproducing the issue with the lastest release of Chrome.  Basically, when a Keyman Desktop keyboard is active, the Enter key will not submit any forms in Chrome, nor will it work in a text area.  Quite an annoying issue!  I was able to reproduce the issue without any trouble.

The next step was to download the full Chrome source and build it.  This was quite an involved task, as none of our development machines were configured in the specific requirements that Chromium requires for building, and none of them had the hardware resources required (recommended 8GB RAM + 8 CPU cores!)  I had to configure a new computer just to build Chromium. In all, I downloaded over 1.2GB of Chrome source, plus over 2GB of development tools.  However, once all was in place, the Chromium build went smoothly, and I was able to start debugging.

With many thousands of source files, it could be difficult to locate the place within Chromium where the Enter key was being processed.  I started by using Spy++ to find the window class for the browser window with focus, and then searched the sources (using the online search, much faster!) for the window class name thus identified, Chrome_RenderWidgetHostHWND.  Once I had found this, I was actually in the correct source file, and only a minute or later I had located the message handler for WM_KEYDOWN, RenderWidgetHostViewWin::OnKeyEvent.  I added a breakpoint in this function, and it was now time to run Chromium and press Enter.

I loaded a page with a form, clicked on an element in the form, then pressed Enter, which then caused the debugger breakpoint to fire, and I stepped through the message handler function.  To my surprise and pleasure, the cause of the problem jumped out immediately.  The lines below from the RenderWidgetHostViewWin::OnKeyEvent function in Chromium are the relevant lines, and the red line below is specifically where we ended up:

  // Special processing for enter key: When user hits enter in omnibox
  // we change focus to render host after the navigation, so repeat WM_KEYDOWNs
  // and WM_KEYUP are going to render host, despite being initiated in other
  // window. This code filters out these messages.
  bool ignore_keyboard_event = false;
  if (wparam == VK_RETURN) {
    if (message == WM_KEYDOWN || message == WM_SYSKEYDOWN) {
      if (KF_REPEAT & HIWORD(lparam)) {
        // this is a repeated key
        if (!capture_enter_key_)
          ignore_keyboard_event = true;
      } else {
        capture_enter_key_ = true;
      }
    } else if (message == WM_KEYUP || message == WM_SYSKEYUP) {
      if (!capture_enter_key_)
        ignore_keyboard_event = true;
      capture_enter_key_ = false;
    } else {
      // Ignore all other keyboard events for the enter key if not captured.
      if (!capture_enter_key_)
        ignore_keyboard_event = true;
    }
  }

The Enter key was always being ignored when it was sent from Keyman Desktop! But why was this happening?  It seems the KF_REPEAT flag was being set on some keystrokes from Keyman Desktop, but we were never setting that flag. In fact, we didn't even have the ability to set that flag using the SendInput API!

It turns out that SendInput uses the existing keyboard state when synthesizing its keystrokes, and so when the Enter key is pressed by the user, and Keyman Desktop swallows that keystroke and then later reproduces it, the SendInput function uses the existing (real) KEYDOWN state of VK_RETURN within the keyboard state buffer and thinks that Keyman Desktop's synthesized VK_RETURN is now a repeat, and hence sets the KF_REPEAT flag.

Previously, we had avoided setting the keyboard state for each key as it is pressed.  We now have a beta fix that resets the keyboard state for a specific key before sending a keystroke, so that the correct flags will be set on the WM_KEYDOWN message.  In our testing, this is working well, but we need to test a bit more yet with other applications to ensure no side effects arise.  This fix is in build 8.0.347.0, downloadable from our beta home page.

Digression: This issue arose with Chrome due to a fix made more than two years ago, in Chrome issue 26755.  The Enter issue with Keyman Desktop is noted in Chrome issue 46451.  I have noted the link between the two issues for the Chromium developers to work through if they so desire.  I'm sorry it took so long to trace the cause of this issue...

IPA Gets Mini

We’ve added a featured minisite for IPA keyboards to the Keyman website. It’s now a lot easier to discover new IPA keyboards and locate old favourites.

So What Is IPA?

IPA stands for International Phonetic Alphabet, the standard phonetic alphabet used worldwide to acurately and consistently record all the sounds in every language. In daily life, you’re most likely to come across the IPA on Wikipedia, in a dictionary, or when learning a new language. It looks like this:

ðɪs ɪz aɪ pʰiː eɪ. wɪtʃ ɪz bɛɾɚ, tʰə seɪ iðɚ oɹ aɪðɚ, tʰəmeɪɾo oɹ tʰəmatʰo, zi oɹ zɛd?

You can find out more about the IPA here.

The Keyboards

SIL IPA Unicode provides easy access to every IPA character. Most IPA characters are typed using a base letter in combination with =, <, and >. Most of the remaining keyboard keys give their normal output. This makes SIL IPA Unicode especially well suited for typing mixed IPA + English documents.

IPA Total contains a full range of IPA characters along with a host of arrows and other transcription symbols. Characters are typed by repeat-pressing of the backquote key (`) after a base letter, with shift-key shortcuts for transforming a character based on principles of articulation. For example, pressing 'l' + backquote nine times yields ɮ, but you can reach the same letter pressing 'l' + 'F' (think Fricative key).

The BU Keyboard types not only IPA, but also a variety of Americanist and European characters, currencies, and symbols. The keyboard uses a conventions based approach where the ctrl, alt, and shift combinations have a consistent semantic meaning, making it easier to guess at new combinations once the conventions are mastered.

LingfilSemitica was originally designed for Latin transcriptions of Semitic texts, but has since been expanded to include the full IPA range. The keyboard uses a collection of methods to enter IPA, including combinations, repeat-pressing, and shift state keys. Optimised for Swedish hardware, the keyboard may also be used on other 102-key QWERTY and European keyboards. If you are interested in LingfilSemitica but have a 101-key US QWERTY hardware keyboard, we'd recommend you use instead the partner application LingfilSemitica-US.

Typing Comparison

Here's a handy chart to compare typing a selection of characters with the four keyboards. The red keys modify the black keys to output the correct IPA symbol. Click the chart to enlarge it.

A Word of Advice

When working with IPA keyboards, you may find it easier if you turn off spellchecking and autocorrect.

Go to the IPA Keyboards Home Page

Keyman Desktop 8.0 Updates

While things have appeared to be quiet at Tavultesoft over the last 2 months, we've been very busy working on a number of projects.  One area I have been heavily involved in is working through bug reports and crash reports for Keyman Desktop 8.0.

We did a lot of work on reviewing the bug and crash reports, and in the process released a number of beta updates during this period.  These beta releases have been undergoing stability testing and I am pleased to report that the fixes so far all appear to be solid.  The full release notes are available, but I'd like to highlight a few of most significant fixes now:

• UPDATE! A fix for the Enter key not working in Chrome.  We eneded up downloading the Chrome source (known as Chromium) and building a debug version of Chromium to isolate the issue here. 
• A fix for characters repeating on some computers (I2908).  On a few computers, when typing with Keyman Desktop, each letter would appear twice, especially in Microsoft Word.
• Several fixes for keyboard selection failing (I3191, I3227, I3212, I3160).  The most significant of these fixes a situation where Keyman keyboards don't activate when US-International is the default Windows keyboard layout.
• A fix for a crash when switching to another user interface language, caused by a damaged user interface language file that was posted to our website for a few days (sorry folks!) (I3192)
• A workaround for a crash when Keyman is shut down, caused by a third-party component (I2975, I3008, I3072, I3105, I3111, I3116, I3132, I3139, I3152, I3164, I3189, I3206).  Each of these crashes had different characteristics but they all stemmed from the same problem in the buggy component, which we've now eliminated from Keyman Desktop and rewritten from scratch.

If you ever experience a crash in Keyman Desktop or Keyman Developer, you have the opportunity to send in a crash report to us.  If you include your email address when you send us the crash report, we'll treat it as a support case and work with you to resolve the issue, whether it is caused by a bug in Keyman Desktop, or by some other circumstance on your computer.  Nearly all the fixes in these beta releases have come about as the result of feedback from end users.  So, tell us when you have a problem with our software!

We are shortly going to release an update which will be automatically available to all Keyman Desktop 8.0 users which incorporates all the fixes above, and more.  It will be a recommended update for all users.  If you want to get hold of these changes now, download the beta!

We have some other exciting (for me, at least) projects on the boil which I hope we can talk about soon!

Typing Lushootseed on Your Desktop and the Web

Do you speak a dialect of Lushootseed — Salishan languages of Washington state? If you do — and even if you don't, we'd like to introduce you to Dave Sienko's new Lushootseed Unicode keyboard for Keyman Desktop and KeymanWeb.

Lushootseed Unicode is designed to follow closely on a QWERTY US keyboard layout, so it's simple to learn. The keyboard works well with a selection of fonts and includes Dave's own Lushootseed School and Lushootseed Sulad (pictured in the On Screen Keyboard).

Why not try the keyboard today for Keyman Desktop or KeymanWeb?

Download Lushootseed Unicode for Keyman Desktop 8.0
Use Lushootseed Unicode in KeymanWeb Live
Add Lushootseed Unicode to your site
Surf the web with Lushootseed Unicode

Chinese Comes to Keyman Desktop 8

We've just re-released our Simplified Chinese keyboard (aka CS Pinyin). It's now 64-bit compliant for Keyman Desktop 8.  We also have a version of this keyboard that can be used in your web browser or embedded into any website using KeymanWeb!

The Many Features of Simplified Chinese

If you're a Chinese scholar or student and you haven't tried Simplified Chinese yet, you should. Several years ago, in collaboration with Peter Hauer of Linguasoft, we designed the Simplified Chinese keyboard as an innovative multi-method input mapping solution to make Chinese simple for scholars.  It is now updated for Keyman Desktop 8.0, with support for Windows 7 and 64-bit.

The keyboard is packed with features including:

Input Features

• Four full Chinese input methods, with mapping for over a 100,000 single or multi-character sequences —
  1. Pinyin
  2. RAD-RSC (Radical/Rest Stroke Count)
  3. FCI (Four Corner Index)
  4. Unicode code point
• English direct input of more than 550 common names for historically important people and places (e.g. Beethoven › 贝多芬, Kuwait › 科威特).
• An input dictionary of over 440 Chinese family names.
• Two-letter abreviation input for key Chinese provinces, regions, and cities.
• Optional input of tone digits (1-4). 
• Wild-card input matching.

IMX Features

• Four separate character selection methods —
  1. Keyboard numerals
  2. Keypad
  3. Function keys
  4. Mouse
• Vertical or horizontal resizable IMX window.
• Optional cursor tracking.

Output Features

• Three distinct output methods —
  
  1. Han
  2. Pinyin
  3. Han + Pinyin
• Easy output of any single character in a multi-character sequence.
• Optional automatic output of unique matches.
• Full and half-width punctuation.

The Four Input Methods

Pinyin

It's easy to enter standard pinyin. Just start typing, with or without tone digits. Press enter to select the first character. Type a number, use the arrow keys, or point-and-click to enter a later character.

You can do the same for multi-character strings.

RAD-RSC

To enter characters by radical-rest stroke count, type '$' followed by the traditional (214) radical number followed by a '.' followed by the remaining stroke count. For example, to find and enter 央, you would enter '$37' for the radical 37 (大) + '.2' for the two additional strokes.

If you don't know the traditional number for the radical, the keyboard includes a simple look-up. Enter the number of strokes in the radical followed by a question mark to pull up the full list of radicals with that stroke count.

Four Corner

Use '#' to enter characters by the four corner method, typing the digits in z shaped order.

Unicode

Finally, any Unicode character, Chinese or otherwise, can be typed with the keyboard using the format 'U+XXXX' or 'U+XXXXX'. This greatly simplifies entry of obscure supplementary plane characters.

Get the keyboard

Download the Simplified Chinese keyboard for Keyman Desktop.

Use the Simplified Chinese keyboard in your web browser with KeymanWeb.