Mac System 10.6 (Snow Leopard) now includes a handwriting recognition option for inputting Chinese (Simplified or Traditional), which is an adaptation from the iPhone 2.0 system. The rest of the entry will provide instructions on how to activate it, but note that it only works on a laptop with a trackpad. As far as I can tell, you cannot do this with a mouse.

Read the stroke names of the Chinese characters during the stroke order animations. Click the animated Chinese character or the Next Stroke button below the animated Chinese character to hear the native-speaker pronunciation of the strokes of the character. Download example sentence MP3 audio files to listen to them on your phone. Chinese Handwriting Input free download - Google Input Tools, LingoWare Chinese (Simplified), NJStar Chinese Word Processor, and many more programs. To type pinyin with tone marks on your Mac device, you'll need to do three things:. Add the 'ABC - Extended' keyboard to your input methods. Switch your input method to this keyboard. Type the vowels with the correct tone marks. Chinese Pinyin input or macro: When using a Pinyin input method (or my Pinyin macros for Word and Excel ) in Windows, Mac, Linux, or almost any other operating system, if you don't have u-with-diaeresis on your keyboard, then type the letter 'v' like this. How to Change Language in Word for Mac. The display and keyboard layout languages used in Office for Mac are the same as the ones for the operating system. You cannot use separate languages for the OS and Office applications. However, you can specify a different proofing language for Office for Mac.

Activation

  1. Go to the Apple menu and open Systems Preferences.
  2. Click Language & Text (U.N. flag icon).
  3. Click the tab for Input Sources check either Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese. Make sure that the Trackpad Handwriting option is also checked.
  4. Close the System Preferences window.

Use the Trackpad

  1. Open a software application such as a word processor, spread-sheet or any other application in which you need to enter text.
  2. On the upper right portion of the screen, click on the American flag icon (). Use the dropdown menu to select Show Trackpad Writing.
  3. A welcome message will be displayed. Click OK to open the track pad.
  4. A semi transparent dark gray window appears. You can draw in the trackpad and see the list of suggested characters. Note that a delete button is shown in the upper left
  5. To select a character, drag your finger on the right edge of the trackpad until the correct character is highlighted, then tap once.
  6. To clear the trackpad, tap once on the upper left corner.
  7. To exit the track pad, press Shift+Control+SpaceBar
  8. To disable the track pad, open the Language and Text options in System Preferences and uncheck the trackpad options.

Note to fellow ETS Employees: Trackpad interferes with SnapzPro, so be warned if you are testing or planning to use this.

Comments

I don't know the Chinese script, so can't judge the accuracy or ease of the input. However, I would warn that the trackpad disables normal keyboard and mouse operations. For instance, if you need to switch applications, you need to close the track pad (Shift+Control+Spacebar, do the switch, then reopen the trackpad from the flag/keyboard menu). Not very convenient.

It's important to remember that this was built for the iPhone, so probably works best there.

Video Demo (from shoki6229)

Postscript: Japanese

How To Write Chinese Characters In Word For Mac

One may wonder how the trackpad handles Japanese, and the answer seems to be that while you can input Chinese characters (kanji), or at least the ones still used in Traditional Chinese, you really can't input Hiragana or Katakana. That means you would need to toggle between the Trackpad and alternate methods of Japanes input. In fact the Trackpad is NOT listed in the menu of Japanese input methods in Snow Leopard.

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I am a Penn State technology specialist with a degree in linguistics and have maintained the Penn State Computing with Accents page since 2000.

See Elizabeth Pyatt's Homepage(ejp10@psu.edu) for a profile.

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A Microsoft Word add-in for adding tone graphs, pinyin or zhuyin to Hanzi(汉字).

The tones are automatically placed above the chinese characters, by the computer using a dictionary (CC-CEDICT) for the longest word it can find. If it is unsure of the tones, it will place multiple tones above the character (here 好, as 大家好 is not in the dictionary as one word).

To annotate tones for LaTeX, see hanzi2tghz.

This project is hosted on GitHub.

Installation

  1. Download and run the installer.
  2. Open Word and the hanzi2tghz ribbon should be there.
  3. If any of the previous steps failed, please write about them on the issues page or email me.
  4. Read the documentation, to see what it can do.
  5. Any feedback would be much appreciated. Please write about it on the issues page or email me.

Documentation

Before use, please remember to make a backup of your document, just in case.

How To Write Chinese Characters In Word For Mac Shortcut

Contents

  1. Tones, Pinyin or Zhuyin Fuhao
  2. Dictionary Correction
  3. Troubleshooting

Tones, Pinyin or Zhuyin Fuhao

Adding

To add tones or pinyin to text select some, or all the text (Ctrl+a), and press either the Add Tones, Add Pinyin or Add Zhuyin Button. When the dictionary finds multiple pronunciations for tones it puts multiple tones. For Pinyin or Zhuyin, it duplicates the words with the various pronuciations. To reduce duplicates use the Dictionary Correction utilities.

When tones or pinyin are added, all the font information about the text before is lost, so the size, colour, font, etc. are reset to the default.

Removing

When removing tones or pinyin, it is preferable to use the undo button, to undo the previous action of adding them. For tones, the Remove Tones/Pinyin button can be used, but it can be problematic for pinyin, as it does not remove the duplicated characters caused by converting to pinyin.

Editing

To edit tones or pinyin, click on or select some text, then press the Edit Tones or Pinyin button and the incorrectly named Edit Text or Pinyin window should appear.

Here 大家好 has tones, and 欢迎来到我的网站 has pinyin. For tones, put the number of the tone or tones, in the text box on the right. For pinyin put the pinyin followed by the tone number.

Resizing Text

When the text is resized the tone/pinyin do not scale with the text size. The solution is to use one of the resize buttons.

Pinyin or Zhuyin Fuhao

To resize pinyin or zhuyin fuhao, use the Pinyin Resize: button. The number next to it (0.5 is the default) is the relative size of the text compared to the characters, i.e. 0.5 is half the size, 1.0 is the same size.

Tones

For Tones there are two issues the size of the tones and the height of the tones above the characters. For the size of the tones use the Tone Resize: button and change the relative size if you wish. For the height of the tones, change the number next to the Tone Height: button (12 is the default, make it larger for larger text), then click the Tone Height: button.

Dictionary Correction

Enabling Dictionary Correction

To enable dictionary correction press the Enable button in the Dictionary Corrections Section of the toolbar/Ribbon. By default there are no corrections, you can see the avaliable corrections, by pressing the Edit Dictionary in the Dictionary Corrections section. To import a tone corrections dictionary, or make yourown, see below.

Editing the Corrections Dictionary

To open the Dictionary Corrections window press the Edit Dictionary button.

Press the Done button to close the window saving changes.

Adding Words

To add a correction, type the chinese characters in the box containing 汉字 and the pinyin, separated by character by spaces, postfixed with the tone graph number, in the han4 zi4 box. Then press the Add button and it should be copied into the list. See the above window for examples.

For multiple pronuciations add the same chinese characters twice, with different pronunciations.

Deleting Words

To delete words, select the large grey box to the left of the row you wish to delete, and press the delete key. There is no button in the window to do this.

Editing Words

The words in the dictionary cannot be edited, to preven errors in the program. To edit one delete it, and add the corrected version.

Enabling/Disabling Words

Words can be enabled or disabled individually, buy having the tickbox checked or unchecked, respectively.

Importing and Exporting

Edits to the dictionary can be imported or exported, to enable sharing, by selecting an option in the File Menu.

Currently there is no undo mechanism for this. The tone corrections file is a hidden file called tghzToneCorrections.txt in your personal user or home folder. The file can be backed up by exporting it (see below) or making a duplicate. Deleting this file should cause a new empty file.

Importing

To import a tone corrections file, press the Edit Dictionary button, and then File -> Import Dictionary Corrections File from the menu bar in the Dictionary Corrections window. A file dialog box will appear allowing you to choose the file to import. Please be careful to select the correct file.

Here is my Tone Corrections File. To download it, right-click the hyperlink and choose Save Link As..., or similar.

Exporting

To export a tone corrections file, press the Edit Dictionary button, and then File -> Export Dictionary Corrections File from the menu bar in the Dictionary Corrections window. A file dialog box will appear allowing you to choose where to export the file to.

Colouring Tones

Tones/pinyin and/or characters can be coloured using the colour button. Tick the box(es) before adding tones or pinyin for the output to also be coloured.

Converting Traditional/Simplified Characters

To convert from traditional or simplified to simplified or traditional, select the text and press the To Simplified or To Traditional buttons, respectively.

Troubleshooting

If you have any problems, please feel free to email me.

Certificate Error

While running the setup file there may be a certificate error:

, because it is installing from an untrusted location.

To fix this, https://raw.githubusercontent.com needs to be added to the list of trusted sites:

Open Internet Explorer, and click the Gear Icon (top right corner) and then choose Internet Options. In the Internet Options window select Security, then Trusted Sites, then click the button that says Sites. In the Trusted sites window copy and paste:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com

and Add it. It should now be possible to install the program. But beware, this will make your computer trust any content from github, not just this add-in. To be safe it should be removed after installation, but the program will not automatically update.

Visual Studio Tools for Office Solution Installer Error

How To Write Chinese Characters In Word For Mac Os

While running the setup file, there may be an error message with the Visual Studio Tools for Office Solution Installer.

To fix this, please run the setup program as an administrator.

(This problem was seen on Windows 8.1)

Typing Chinese Characters In Word

Other Problems

How To Write Chinese Characters In Word For Mac Download

If there are any other problems with using or installing the software, please email me or submit an issue.