Has the focus been moved to another input area? If so, click back at the correct insertion point and the IME should re-appear.

If the IME window disappears after typing some letters but before the Chinese characters have been inserted, check:

After I started typing, the IME window disappeared. For example, it is not yet generally possible to use email addresses written with Chinese characters, so email address fields will not accept Chinese. If the IME window does not appear when a letter key is typed, then either the site has not been configured to use KeymanWeb, or else the input area you are entering text into cannot accept Chinese text. Troubleshooting The IME window is not visible Type Escape to close the IME window and leave the typed Latin alphabet characters unchanged in the input area. If more than one or two letters (in Latin alphabet) are to be typed into the input area, the KeymanWeb keyboard should simply be disabled, then re-enabled (after white space or punctuation) when continuing to enter Chinese text. Do not use the IME to enter a Chinese character or word immediately following Latin text if that text must remain unchanged. But once a Latin letter is typed at any point, the IME will use any Latin characters immediately before that character to try and find matching Chinese characters or words. Editing existing textĬhinese text already entered into an input area may be edited in the normal way, using cut and paste or the Backspace and Delete keys, and moving through the document with the cursor (arrow) keys. If the IME for any reason does not process the string at the insertion point correctly, press Escape to close the IME window, re-position the cursor as required, then continue entering text normally. In most cases, the IME will remember what has been typed and process the entire input sequence correctly. If you know which character you will want from the final list for a typed string, you can type the selection digit and keep on typing. The IME recognizes if more characters have been typed and will only display the suggestions for the complete string that has been entered. You do not need to wait for the IME to display the list of possible Chinese characters after each key-stroke.

Accented Pinyin The accented pinyin for each character or word shown in the IME list can be seen by moving the mouse over that character:Ībbreviations for place names The widely-used standard two-letter abbreviations for provinces and some cities and regions are also recognized by the IME: Typing Home will move immediately to the start of the list (the most frequently encountered words matching the typed letters). Typing PageUp (or clicking the left-arrow box) will move back through the list, nine suggestions at a time. Exact matches are always shown first, followed by up to twenty common characters or words that start with the entered string. Clicking on that box, or pressing PageDown, will show the next nine matching characters or words. Where a green arrow is shown in the rightmost box, it indicates that there are more Chinese characters or words that match the entered string. Syllables with many possible Chinese characters If Space, Enter or any digit or punctuation key is typed before the IME is showing a list of suggestions, it will be output directly into the document. Typing any punctuation key will similarly cause the IME to insert the first listed character or word, followed by the typed punctuation character. When the IME is showing a list of suggestions, pressing the space-bar or typing Enter will also replace the typed pinyin letters by the first character or word currently shown. The IME will usually display more frequently used characters or words before other characters or words matching the same input string. Typing 1, or clicking the first box, will immediately replace the entered pinyin string by the Chinese word for that string, and hide the IME window. The exact match for pinyin is now shown with a white background, and one other word starting with pinyin is shown with grey background. The IME now displays the only two Chinese words (in its dictionary) that start with pinyi. Only Chinese characters for pin are now listed.Īs there are no Chinese words written as piny, the list again shows words that start with piny (against a grey background). The list changes and now shows those characters exactly matching pi, with a white background.

The KeymanWeb IME window appears, and a list of some of the most common characters starting with p is shown with a grey background, indicating that the character is not an exact match for the typed letter. The following step-by-step example showing what happens as each letter is typed will help explain just how the keyboard is used.

Pinyin helper