OSX Letter Selection Feature with Pinyin Tonemarks?

[Karl Breitenwieser]

I just discovered a great OSX feature by accident, and I don't know if it is Mavericks only or has been there all the time without me noticing:

When you press for example the o key (in western keyboard layout) for 2 seconds you get a selection windows which has ö, ò, ..., but no ǒ

If there would be a way to edit this popup to include the missing characters or - even better - to have 1 to 4 equal the tone marks it would be perfect for writing in pinyin.

Any ideas on this topic?

Thank you very much,

Karl

[Jens Østergaard Petersen]

Hi Kari,

Great idea - I hadn't noticed either, but this feature came with Lion.

The answer is in <http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-1320337.html>.

Cheers,

Jens

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[Tom Gewecke]

It has been there since OS 10.7.  For a pinyin modification see

http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-1320337.html

[Tom Gewecke]

On Feb 13, 2014, at 8:28 PM, Karl Breitenwieser wrote:

 even better - to have 1 to 4 equal the tone marks it would be perfect for writing in pinyin.

Another option would be to create a .plist as described in the macrumors article for an otherwise unused key and for the choices use the Unicode combining diacritics on their own.  So you type a vowel and then hold down that key and choose the right accent mark.

Of course this may not look perfect with all fonts.

[Marcy]

On Thursday, February 13, 2014 10:28:23 PM UTC-5, Karl Breitenwieser wrote:

 

If there would be a way to edit this popup to include the missing characters or - even better - to have 1 to 4 equal the tone marks it would be perfect for writing in pinyin.

The way you phrased this sentence is confusing for me. Hm do you mean that you'd like to have a way to select the tone when writing pinyin?

If so, there is a feature already like this. It isn't super efficient but it works. Basically once you've typed out some pinyin and you haven't finalised it yet, you can hold down the Option key and hit the Tab key a few times. By hitting Tab, this will cycle through all four tones.