Tibetan Input Method

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Windows

Windows (32 bit)

TISE

TISE is a free Wylie input method that runs on XP, Vista and Windows 7 (32 bit only). You can download the software from

A short introduction: Typing Tibetan with TISE[1]
  • Start the TISE program: you will see a Mount-Kailash icon image:Tise-on.jpg on the right side of Windows task-bar.
  • TISE can be switched on image:Tise-on.jpg and off image:Tise-off.jpg with <shift>-<space>, or by clicking on the Mount-Kailash icon image:Tise-on.jpg on the right side of Windows task-bar.
  • Basic letters

    • All basic Tibetan and Tibetan Sanskrit represented by EWTS scheme are supported by Tise. Often typing the final a as in ka ཀ is not necessary, k followed by a tsheg <space> is enough.
    • Longer vowels (with a subjointed small letter achung) are typed as aa ཨཱ, ii ཨཱི, uu ཨཱུ, ee ཨཱེ, oo ཨཱོ, or A ཨཱ, I ཨཱི, U ཨཱུ, E ཨཱེ, O ཨཱོ.
    • Retroflex i ྀ is typed as -i, and retroflex i with achung as -I ཱྀ, e.g. k-i ཀྀ, k-I ཀཱྀ.
    • au ཨཽ, ai ཨཻ are implemented.

  • Tibetan punctuation

    • As per EWTS. Asterisk '*' types non-breaking tsheg (0F0C) ་.
    • Typing '_' (underscore) gives 0xa0 (non-breaking space).
    • Regular space (0x20) is typed by x key.

  • Tibetan Sanskrit letters

    • As per EWTS, they are usually typed as capital letter (with Shift key pressed). Implemented are the following Tibetan Sanskrit letters: Ta ཊ, Tha ཋ, Da ཌ, Na ཎ, Sha ཥ (the latter can be type as S) R+ ཪ, +W ྺ, +Y ྻ, +R ྼ, (fixed form ra, wa, ya, e.g. ཪྟ་ རྻ་ མྺ་ ཡྼ་)
  • H ཿ, M ཾ, & ྅, ? ྄.
    • For the sake of simplicity, EWTS ~M and ~M` are typed as q ྃ and Q ྂ respectively.

  • Complex stacks

    • This is the major improvement of EWTS compared to previous approaches, and Tise fully takes advantage of this. In Tise stacks are typed using + symbol to stack glyphs vertically. If vertical stack is not what is desired, it is possible to quit vertical stacking mode by typing '.' (or just type a vowel or a tsheg if the syllable is complete).

  • Examples

    • gya གྱ is stacked, but g.ya གཡ isn't
    • to type siddhi use: si.ddhi or sid+d+hi. In many cases, as with all standard wylie sequences like brdza, for example, typing extra + sign is not required, Tise tries to be user friendly by minimizing the number of key hits needed for typing.
    • More examples: hUq ཧཱུྃ་, hUQ ཧཱུྂ, d+hIH དྷཱིཿ, oM AHhUQ ཨོཾ་ཨཱཿཧཱུྂ.

Monlam BodYig IME

Monlam BodYig is a free set of Tibetan fonts and an IME that supplies four different keyboard layouts. The IME will add itself to the standard Windows language bar.

One of the keyboard layouts uses the TCRC BodYig layout, which is more familiar to most Tibetans. You can install the Monlam IME with or without the Monlam fonts, and once installed, you can type any Unicode Tibetan font.

Download the Monlam install package at http://lobsangmonlam.org/Product.html or from http://tibetangeeks.com/downloads/bodyig/Monlam_BodYig-v.3/

Windows (64 bit)

There is no free Wylie EWTS keyboard for Windows Vista and Windows 7 64 bit at this time.

Tavulte Soft sells a 64-bit enabled product Keyman Light that supports EWTS (Extended Wylie) on 64 bit Windows. Chose the "Tibetan THDL" keyboard.

Note: Currently a beta-version is needed to fully support 64bit Windows.

Mac OS-X

Mac OS-X 10.5 support for Tibetan

Mac Tibetan keyboard: select System Preferences / Language & Text / Input Sources

Mac OS-X since version 10.5 supports different Tibetan keyboards including Wylie.

Please go to System Preferences / Language & Text / Input Sources to enable one of the following keyboards:

  • Tibetan Otani
  • Tibetan QWERTY
  • Tibetan Wylie
Mac Wylie keyboard

alternatively, or for older Mac OS-X versions, you can use:

Monlam BodYig package

The Monlam BodYig package includes a Mac OS-X installer. (The IME is described above in the Windows section.) Download at http://lobsangmonlam.org/Product.html or from http://tibetangeeks.com/downloads/bodyig/Monlam_BodYig-v.3/་

Linux (Gnome)

Installing a Tibetan input method for gnome

For gnome you need the packages uim, uim-m17nlib, uim-applet-gnome. This installs a Wylie input method (as part of uim-m17nlib) and a keyboard switcher that can be added to the gnome panel:

  • Right-click the gnome-panel, select "Add to Panel..." and add the "Input Method Indicator (uim)".
  • Within the configuration of UIM, enable the input method "m17n-bo-wylie" or the newer m17n-bo-ewts, .
  • Now open gnome text editor (gedit), select a Tibetan font, e.g. Tibetan Machine Uni and activate the input method "m17n-bo-wylie".
  • You should now be able to type Tibetan.

Advanced customization

It is possible to exchange or change the way the input method "m17n-bo-wylie" works: Simply edit (as root, make a backup first!) 

/usr/share/m17n/bo-wylie.mim

to add or modify the translation from wylie into Unicode Tibetan. This file serves as documentation of the input method and is also a good way to understand how the input method translates Wylie into Tibetan Unicode.

Online tools

Nice - letters are in a ka-kha-ga-nga keypad. Not so nice - you have to type it right the first time, you can't insert letters. Has numbers also. Don't know how it does for stacking.

More information

External Links

References

  1. ↑ From TISE readme.
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