Vu Tuy Hoa
The number of Vietnamese Net surfers around the globe
has increased dramatically in the last few months. They bring with
them the rich Vietnamese language and culture to the Internet. Along
with the tremendous growth in the user community, Vietnamese Web sites
have also increased in large numbers with considerable improvements
both cosmetically and technically. Now a day, aside from communicating
by phone and mail, E-mail is becoming an important part of
life.
However, standard Vietnamese language used in E-mail on the Internet has not been fully supported. It differs greatly from the conventional Vietnamese used on newspapers and prints. The most widely accepted format being used by most Web surfers is VIQR, as known as VIetnamese Quoted Readable. This method uses special characters found on common keyboards such as +, ', or ? to denote legible accents. Although it temporarily offers an alternative to the Vietnamese language on the Internet, difficulty in the placement of these special characters when writing often annoys many Web surfers, thus making VIQR impractical and time consuming.
However, a more practical software product called WebNote, introduced by VNI in Spring, 1997, offers Web surfers a true conventional Vietnamese language on the Net complete with legible accents. It helps you to write Vietnamese in E-mail and chat in Windows 3.1 and Windows 95.
To write Vietnamese with WebNote, you only need to include VNI-Internet Mail font in your E-mail or chat software.
WebNote provides you the joy of typing Vietnamese with legible accents, not the special characters used in other methods such as VIQR. Accents as sac, huyen, hoi, nga, nang, mu o, moc o, dau a, gach d will appear as is, not with the replacements like A?, A(, or dd as before.
The typing method is also flexible. Accents can be placed anywhere on the syllable. They will then be correctly placed on their designated characters automatically. Correction is easy since WebNote allows direct correction, meaning incorrect accents can be typed over without erasing first.
If you are using VNI-Tan Ky for Windows or Macintosh, the benefits are even greater with familiar VNI-Tan Ky typing method, which is being widely adopted by increasing number of users. WebNote also allows you to change the accent placement to your desire. For example, if you have been using the question mark (?) for question, you may continue to use the same method to get "?"
Although America Online does not allow Vietnamese fonts for E-mail or chatting; WebNote, however, can force AOL to accept Vietnamese fonts for both.
Moreover, for E-mail to and from CompuServe, users are often frustrated due to the undesired automatic conversion of Vietnamese 8-bit fonts to unreadable characters when passing through CompuServe. WebNote's 7-bit fonts, however, remain unchanged in CompuServe.
For chatting in a Web page, you may pre-select VNI-Internet Mail font prior to joining the chat for correct Vietnamese characters to be typed.
If you are using a different chat software such as Global Chat or WinCIM, WebNote is fully compatible and supported. Vietnamese characters and accents can be typed and viewed as normal using these chat software products.
VIN-Internet Mail font also avoids using periods for special characters, thus eliminating the confusion between end of a sentence and special characters used for accents (see display below).
In an effort to minimize misperception of their messages, some VIQR users often use a "/" before "." to denote end of the sentence. Although it helps clarify the user's intention; it is however, not a long term solution for Vietnamese language on Internet, and reminds us of the unsolved problems with VIQR method.
Technological speaking, VNI says that their WebNote software and VNI-Internet Mail font designs are partially based on both the pros and cons of VIQR method. On the screen, accents are fully displayed as conventional Vietnamese; internally, however, VNI-Internet Mail font reuses some of the existing VIQR characters and converts to "real" accents for display.
As a result, VNI-Internet Mail font is partially compatible with VIQR. More than 50% of text written in VIQR method may be viewed as conventional Vietnamese with legible accents. Other special characters remain unchanged.
If you choose VNI-Internet Mail font, legible Vietnamese accents will be fully displayed. For VIQR selection, some assigned special characters would remain unchanged, others will display as conventional accents.
Regardless of the font selection, VNI-Tan Ky typing method is fully compatible with both fonts. Accents can still be placed anywhere on the syllables and auto correction feature would correctly place the accents to their intended positions.
For that reason, with WebNote, even typing Vietnamese in VIQR method is much more enjoyable than without WebNote.
Although VNI-Internet Mail font is far more superior to VIQR, VNI has decided to retain VIQR with WebNote due to the unavailability of WebNote on UNIX and Macintosh. However, VNI has disclosed that VNI-Internet Mail font is available on Internet as free trial product for these operating systems pending development of a commercial version in the near future.
VNI-Internet Mail font is now available only on Windows, but not on UNIX. However, Macintosh users may use VNI-Internet Mail font if VNI-Tan Ky for Macintosh is installed.
It can also be purchased directly through VNI at:
VNI
14091 Goldenwest St.
Westminster, CA. 92683, USA
Phone: (714) 891-7656
If you want to be on the Net before the year 2000 and be able to type clear and certified conventional Vietnamese: then don't pass up WebNote! Especially when you can download a free 30-day trial copy from the Net. Even though you may never want to be surfing the Net, but just want to try VNI-Tan Ky typing method because others have talked about it, you may want to try WebNote for an unforgettable experience.
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