How to type pinyin text with tone marks in Windows?

Question

How do I type Chinese pinyin text with the tone marks into any application in Windows?

I am aware of the Chinese IME in Windows, which converts pinyin text I type into the Chinese stroked characters. This is not what I want. I want to type and view pinyin text, like rì chū for example, with all the proper tone marks (diacritics).

Answer 1

The U.S. international keyboard that comes with Windows makes typing some accents easy, but apparently not macrons (the bar over the "u" in "chū"). The Māori keyboard has support for those; maybe you can hot switch between the two? Someone claimed to have made a derivative of the international keyboard that permits typing the macrons as well as other accents easily, but I haven't tried it out.

You could try using a tone converter that takes in numeric-based tones and spits out accent-based tones.

Edit:

I found an explicitly pinyin keyboard layout that should do what you want.

Answer 2

You can use the Keyboard Layout Creator to create such a keyboard layout yourself. Off the top of my head I don't know a layout which enables you to type all the tones. As Bkkbrad mentioned, you can't type a macron on US International (which is what I'm using here). But modifying US International to add another dead key for macron shouldn't be too hard.

Answer 3

I came across the same problem today while trying to set up my Windows installation. There is a much better solution under Linux using ibus. Namely, you can set the output to traditional, simplified, or pinyin. This way you can take advantage of the built in recognition algorithms - they place the tone mark on the correct vowel, etc. It would be great if someone has a similar solution for Windows.

Answer 4

this is old, but anyway, you could use the us international keyboard, in which you can type: á à ã â

They're not the exact pinyin tone marks but resemble them very closely

Answer 5

I like the online converter at http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/webime2_pinyin.php

Just type e.g. hao3 and it directly becomes hǎo.

Answer 6

I like the pinyinput input method editor. Just type the letters for the syllable followed by a tone number, and it will combine them in the usual way.