UniKey (software)

Last updated
UniKey
Developer(s) Phạm Kim Long
Initial release2000;23 years ago (2000) [1]
Stable release
4.6 RC2 / 19 September 2023;3 months ago (2023-09-19)
Written in C++
Operating system Microsoft Windows, Linux, [2] MacOS [3]
Available inEnglish and Vietnamese [4]
Type Input method editor
License GNU GPL v3
Website www.unikey.org

UniKey is the most popular third-party software and input method editor (IME) for encoding Vietnamese for Windows. The core, UniKey Vietnamese Input Method, is also the engine imbedded in many Vietnamese software-based keyboards in Windows, Android, Linux, macOS and iOS. UniKey is free and the source code for the UniKey Vietnamese Input Method is distributed under GNU General Public License. [1] The official website of UniKey is unikey.org, which supports both English and Vietnamese.

Contents

Overview

UniKey supports:

UniKey is a minimalistic software and does not require additional library.

About UniKey

UniKey for Windows was released as a free program in 1999. It gained popularity for encoding Vietnamese thanks to its speed, simplicity, and reliability. It became the most popular keyboard program for inputting Vietnamese.

The core engine, UniKey Vietnamese Input Method, is open source and was first released as a part of the x-unikey Vietnamese keyboard for Linux in 2001. Since then, the engine has been integrated in input methods in different OSes and software frameworks. ibus-unikey (developed by Le Quoc Tuan, using UniKey engine) is widely used for Linux distributions. [1]

From Mac OS X Leopard onwards, released in 2007, Apple has integrated the UniKey Vietnamese Input Method to the built-in Vietnamese input of Mac OS. From 2010, the engine has also been integrated to the built-in Vietnamese keyboard in iOS (starting from iOS 4.0). The UniKey engine is also now running in iPhones, iPads, etc. that uses Vietnamese input. [5]

UniKey is developed by Pham Kim Long.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Input method</span> Input of characters not natively available

An input method is an operating system component or program that enables users to generate characters not natively available on their input devices by using sequences of characters that are available to them. Using an input method is usually necessary for languages that have more graphemes than there are keys on the keyboard.

The Vietnamese alphabet is the modern Latin writing script or writing system for romanized Vietnamese. It uses the Latin script based on Romance languages originally developed by Portuguese missionary Francisco de Pina (1585–1625).

VISCII is an unofficially-defined modified ASCII character encoding for using the Vietnamese language with computers. It should not be confused with the similarly-named officially registered VSCII encoding. VISCII keeps the 95 printable characters of ASCII unmodified, but it replaces 6 of the 33 control characters with printable characters. It adds 128 precomposed characters. Unicode and the Windows-1258 code page are now used for virtually all Vietnamese computer data, but legacy VSCII and VISCII files may need conversion.

Vietnamese Quoted-Readable, also known as Vietnet, is a convention for writing Vietnamese using ASCII characters encoded in only 7 bits, making possible for Vietnamese to be supported in computing and communication systems at the time. Because the Vietnamese alphabet contains a complex system of diacritical marks, VIQR requires the user to type in a base letter, followed by one or two characters that represent the diacritical marks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Korean language and computers</span> Input and use of Korean on computers

The writing system of the Korean language is a syllabic alphabet of character parts organized into character blocks representing syllables. The character parts cannot be written from left to right on the computer, as in many Western languages. Every possible syllable in Korean would have to be rendered as syllable blocks by a font, or each character part would have to be encoded separately. Unicode has both options; the character parts ㅎ (h) and ㅏ (a), and the combined syllable 하 (ha), are encoded.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Compose key</span> Computer key to initiate glyph merger

A compose key is a key on a computer keyboard that indicates that the following keystrokes trigger the insertion of an alternate character, typically a precomposed character or a symbol.

On personal computers with numeric keypads that use Microsoft operating systems, such as Windows, many characters that do not have a dedicated key combination on the keyboard may nevertheless be entered using the Alt code. This is done by pressing and holding the Alt key, then typing a number on the keyboard's numeric keypad that identifies the character and then releasing Alt.

A Unicode font is a computer font that maps glyphs to code points defined in the Unicode Standard. The vast majority of modern computer fonts use Unicode mappings, even those fonts which only include glyphs for a single writing system, or even only support the basic Latin alphabet. Fonts which support a wide range of Unicode scripts and Unicode symbols are sometimes referred to as "pan-Unicode fonts", although as the maximum number of glyphs that can be defined in a TrueType font is restricted to 65,535, it is not possible for a single font to provide individual glyphs for all defined Unicode characters. This article lists some widely used Unicode fonts that support a comparatively large number and broad range of Unicode characters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hebrew keyboard</span> Keyboard layout

A Hebrew keyboard comes in two different keyboard layouts. Most Hebrew keyboards are bilingual, with Latin characters, usually in a US Qwerty layout. Trilingual keyboard options also exist, with the third script being Arabic or Russian, due to the sizable Arabic- and Russian-speaking populations in Israel.

Telex or TELEX, is a convention for encoding Vietnamese text in plain ASCII characters. Originally used for transmitting Vietnamese text over telex systems, it is one of the most used input method on phones and touchscreens and also computers. Vietnamese Morse code uses the TELEX system. Other systems include VNI and VIQR.

VNI Software Company is a developer of various education, entertainment, office, and utility software packages. They are known for developing an encoding and a popular input method for Vietnamese on for computers. VNI is often available on computer systems to type Vietnamese, alongside TELEX input method as well. The most common pairing is the use of VNI on keyboard and computers, whilst TELEX is more common on phones or touchscreens.

VPSKeys is a freeware input method editor developed and distributed by the Vietnamese Professionals Society (VPS). One of the first input method editors for Vietnamese, it allows users to add accent marks to Vietnamese text on computers running Microsoft Windows. The first version of VPSKeys, supporting Windows 3.1, was released in 1993. The most recent version is 4.3, released in October 2007.

Sinhala language software for computers have been present since the late 1980s but no standard character representation system was put in place which resulted in proprietary character representation systems and fonts. In the wake of this CINTEC introduced Sinhala within the UNICODE standard. ICTA concluded the work started by CINTEC for approving and standardizing Sinhala Unicode in Sri Lanka.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Unicode input</span> Input characters using their Unicode code points

Unicode input is the insertion of a specific Unicode character on a computer by a user; it is a common way to input characters not directly supported by a physical keyboard. Unicode characters can be produced either by selecting them from a display or by typing a certain sequence of keys on a physical keyboard. In addition, a character produced by one of these methods in one web page or document can be copied into another. In contrast to ASCII's 96 element character set, Unicode encodes hundreds of thousands of graphemes (characters) from almost all of the world's written languages and many other signs and symbols besides.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Avro Keyboard</span> Graphical keyboard software

Avro Keyboard is a free and open source graphical keyboard software developed by OmicronLab for the Microsoft Windows, Linux, MacOS, and several other software additionally adapted its phonetic layout for Android and iOS operating system. It is the first free Unicode and ANSI compliant Bengali keyboard interface for Windows that was published on 26 March 2003.

Bengali input methods refer to different systems developed to type the characters of the Bengali script for Bengali language and others, using a typewriter or a computer keyboard.

The Vietnamese language is written with a Latin script with diacritics which requires several accommodations when typing on phone or computers. Software-based systems are a form of writing Vietnamese on phones or computers with software that can be installed on the device or from third-party software such as UniKey. Telex is the oldest input method devised to encode the Vietnamese language with its tones. Other input methods may also include VNI and VIQR. VNI input method is not to be confused with VNI code page.

VSCII, also known as TCVN 5712, ISO-IR-180, .VN, ABC or simply the TCVN encodings, is a set of three closely related Vietnamese national standard character encodings for using the Vietnamese language with computers, developed by the TCVN Technical Committee on Information Technology (TCVN/TC1) and first adopted in 1993.

There are a number of methods to input Esperanto letters and text on a computer, e.g. when using a word processor or email. Input methods depend on a computer's operating system. Specifically the characters ĵ, ĝ, ĉ, ĥ, ŭ, ŝ can be problematic.

VNLabs or VN Labs is a software company based in San Jose, California, that specializes in input methods for various languages.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Huy An (25 March 2014). "Bộ gõ tiếng Việt phổ biến nhất đã ra đời thế nào?" [How did the most popular Vietnamese input method editor come about?]. VnEconomy (in Vietnamese). Vietnam Economic Times. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
  2. "UniKey Software for Linux".
  3. "UniKey cho macOS và iOS".
  4. 1 2 "Hướng dẫn sử dụng UniKey 3.5" [UniKey 3.5 User Guide]. UniKey (in Vietnamese). April 2004. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
  5. Huy An (26 March 2014). "'Trận chiến' mới của cha đẻ Unikey" [A new "battle" for the father of Unikey]. VnEconomy (in Vietnamese). Vietnam Economic Times. Retrieved 30 March 2015.