Multilingual Support of WinVNKey

A. Introduction

B. Download WinVNKey & Type Vietnamese

C. Type other languages

D. Type Han Nom

E. Last word

A. Introduction

For typing Vietnamese on the computer, we have many keyboard drivers available, for example: WinVNKey, UniKey, VPSKeys, GoTiengViet, Vietkey, etc .... But if we need to type a few letters of a foreign language in a document, for example: French, Russian, German, Italian, Spanish, Czech, Norwegian, etc. ..., then we can only use WinVNKey. The other Vietnamese keyboards do not support this functionality.

The focus of this article is to explain how to use WinVNKey to type more than 30 languages. Besides, there are other short instructions on how to download WinVNKey, and how to type Vietnamese and Han-Nom.

B. Download WinVNKey & Type Vietnamese

WinVNKey is free. From the WinVNKey home page http://winvnkey.sf.net, click "Download" to choose the latest version.

Those users who are not familiar with Vietnamese keyboard can read the basic tutorial “Download WinVNKey & Type Vietnamese” for instructions on how to download and type Vietnamese. Please see the following link: http://winvnkey.sourceforge.net/download-winvnkey-and-type-vietnamese.htm .

This article shows:
- How to download, install and start WinVNKey.
- How to type Vietnamese using different typing methods: VIQR, VNI, Telex, Microsoft, etc.

C. Type other national languages

• What languages?

It is easy to type more than 30 languages (alphabetically):

-       Albanian (Albania)

-       Austrian (Austria)

-       Belgian (Belgium)

-       Canadian (Canada)

-       Croatian (Croatia)

-       Czech (Czech Republic - Czechia)

-       Danish ( Denmark)

-       Estorian (Estoria)

-       Finnish ( Finland)

-       French ( France)

-       German (Germany)

-       Hiragana (Japanese phonetic lettering system)

-       Hungarian (Hungary)

-       Irish (Iceland)

-       Italian (Italy)

-       Katakana (Japanese syllabary)

-       Latvian (language of Lavia)

-       Lithuanian (Lithuania)

-       Dutch (Holland / Netherlands)

-       Norwegian (Norway)

-       Pali

-       Pinyin (Latin based Mandarin)

-       Polish (Poland)

-       Portuguese (Portugal)

-       Romanian (Romania)

-       Russian (Russia)

-       Slovakian (Slovakia)

-       Slovenian (Slovenia)

-       Spanish (Spain)

-       Swedish (Sweden)

-       Turkish (Turkey)

• How to type other languages ?

To type other languages, we just do a few steps:

a)    Start WinVNKey

b)    Click the "Languages" tab

c)    The "Languages" page shows two panels.  The left panel shows a scroll list of 31 languages. Tick the language that we want. This will cause the right panel to display a table where the first column shows the characters to type and the second column shows the resulting characters of the selected language.

Example: Tick the language "German", a table showing how to type in keyboard to have the text of "German" will be as follows:

-       a% → ä

-       A% → Ä

-       b|3 → ß

-       o% → ö

-       O% → Ö

-       u% → ü

-       U% → Ü

d)    Click "OK" button so the choice become effective

e)    Right click inside the left and the right panels to see more options

f)     To edit any language file, highlight or tick the file and click "Edit File" button below to display an "Edit Language" dialog.

D. Type Han Nom

For typing Han Nom, we must download the version that supports Han Nom from the WinVNKey home page.

Instructions in the "Articles about the function of typing Han Nom by WinVNKey" (written in Vietnamese only) is a summary to help the beginners in typing Han Nom by WinVNKey first time or for users wanting to understand more thoroughly the methods of typing Han Nom. Please see the instructions at the following URL: http://winvnkey.sf.net/han-nom/index.htm

E. Last word

WinVNKey is not only multilingual but also rich in advanced features. To understand the other various functions, please see the article "Understanding the special functions of WinVNKey”at: http://winvnkey.sourceforge.net/understanding-the-special-functions-of-winvnkey.htm

MS Word GUI is more complicated than Notepad because the former offers more capabilities. Similarly, WinVNKey GUI is more complex than Unikey or VPSKey because WinVNKey is rich in advanced features and is fully customizable. That is a price to pay for more functionalities.

oOo

- Author of Vietnamese original document: Hoc Dinh Ngo & TuBinh Tran

- Author of English translation: TuBinh Tran 

- Web design: TuBinh Tran