What’s New in VNI Tan Ky 4.0 for Win32

Furthermore, since I have been using VNI-Word for Windows 3.1 and earlier versions extensively on all my work because it is simple and easy to use, I have found that deleting or changing accents is as easy as 1-2-3. You only need to move the cursor to the syllable you want to change and enter the new accents. Existing accents need not be deleted before new ones can be entered. Likewise, the cursor needs not be placed right after the character being changed. It can be anywhere in the syllable.

Surprisingly, similar unique features are also available in WinWord.

In addition, another small but convenient enhancement has been added to VNI Tan Ky 4.0 in WinWord that I really enjoy: the designated accent deletion key "0". For quick deletion, just move the cursor to where you want to delete, press the "0" key once to delete the secondary accents (aù, aø, aû, aõ, aï). Press twice to delete the primary accents (aê, aâ, oâ, ô, eâ, ñ, ö,). Although this feature may not be significant to some, it brings the complete satisfaction to the user and shows a dedicated craftsmanship in designing a superb product for your money’s worth. I truly praise and appreciate such dedication to the details on any product, let alone VNI products, just to prove that they would go extra miles to satisfy the customers.

This feature is not only available in WinWord, you can use it in NotePad too. This is what satisfies me most since the HTML program I am using to edit a Web page uses NotePad as its default text editor. I can now edit a Vietnamese HTML file in NotePad without having to exit and use another editor.

Besides, not only unique features in prior VNI releases such as auto-correction and spelling check will be retained, many other enhancements have been added to the new release just to make it more efficient and convenient to user.

Options available in VNI Tan Ky 4.0 include spelling conventions (linguistic options) such as: where to place the secondary accent in "hoùa, khoûe, tuøy", vowel "i" or "y" after "qu" onset cluster, "i" instead of "y" after first consonant, stand-alone "i" , or auto-correcting for first onset clusters, etc.. These options help to keep your document in an uniformed format for consistency. Since it is assumed that you may already know these features through prior VNI releases, no further detail on this feature is necessary.

As in prior releases, VNI Tan Ky 4.0 allows you to customize the accent keys assignment to your desire according to the character set being used. In addition, you may create different accent keys set for each character set accordingly for your convenience. For example, you may create an accent keys set for VNI, one for VN Labs, another for VietWare, Telex, Vieät Toaùn, and so on. Each uniquely defined keys assignment set will be activated accordingly when a particular character set is selected.

Do you want to create a unique accent keys assignment set for yourself? Presto! Done. I’d prefer a mixed set between default VNI keys assignment and a few others from Telex mode. Take my case as an example: My brother and I are using the same computer. I’ve used macros (Toác Kyù) to assign accent keys, but he prefers standard keys assignment without macros. The annoying saga continues for months until VNI Tan Ky 4.0 comes along. The problem has now been solved conveniently with different sets of keys assignment to satisfy individual’s preference. With just a click of a button, you can toggle from one keys assignment setting to another without having to reassign accent keys repeatedly.

Previously, spelling check is available exclusively in VNI-Word only. However, it is now widely available in WinWord, WordPad, NotePad, and even e-mail software.

Spelling check may even be used with non-VNI character set or font.

When in doubt about spelling, the Thesaurus option in the Dictionary 2001 is the solution. For example, if you are uncertain whether "khi deå" is correct, then look it up in TDCT 2001. How? Run TDCT 2001 and enter the word you want to search. TDCT 2001 will list all possible spellings for the word, including words with the same sound (homonyms) for your reference.

If TDCT 2001 is already active, just highlight the word in-doubt and press Ctrl+? to start searching. TDCT will check the spelling in the foreground right in your edit session.

Besides, TDCT 2001 contains more than 140,000 words for all you need in working with Vietnamese language on computer. So, don’t be surprised when seeing the resulting search list with more than dozens of words, even hundreds.

TDCT 2001 also reminds common misspelling cases that different dialects normally encounter. For example, northerners (Baéc dialect) often misspell the starting consonants: s/x, ch/tr; southerners (Nam dialect) in the contrary, usually misspell ending consonants: t/c, n/ng/, and both "hoûi" and "ngaõ" accents. You may select one or more "error cases" as described above when checking the spelling per particular dialect for correctness.

(I’m amazed to find that "khi deå" is included in TDCT 2001. Just to test a little further to see if VNI has done their homework, I then look it up in both Vietnam Dictionary by Leâ Vaên Ñöùc, revised and updated by Leâ Ngoïc Truï, and Vietnamese Dictionary by Social Scientology Publishing House in Hanoi, 1994 and found that "khi deå" is listed in both dictionaries).

Another neat little enhancement available in VNI Taân Kyø 4.0: Vietnamese Date Insertion. Regardless of the application software you are using, Vietnamese date insertion is always a convenient feature to add date in Vietnamese format to your document, particularly when composing a letter.

 The Magic of Conversion

Many enhancements in VNI Tan Ky 4.0 have really surprised me when I try to use them. But most of all, the truly amazing feature is its unique conversion technique. It works like "magic".

One of my close friends who is a computer buff and also an editor at a local Vietnamese newspaper. As the job requires, he receives countless articles, open letters, mail, and other written materials daily for his newspaper. He constantly complaints about great difficulty in screening and reading hundreds of these documents that used various incompatible character sets, and often confused in determining on which character set or format being used for a particular document since it is nowhere to be found. More than often, he has no choice but to return the material to the author because he is just simply unable to read into his computer. Recently, he calls and happily says that the confusion and head-ache have all but disappeared since he installed VNI Tan Ky 4.0. The new conversion tool has helped him tremendously in reading countless written materials daily. He is now a happy user and strongly agrees with the term "magic" I’ve named for the new conversion technique.

First of all, among more than 30 different Vietnamese character sets now in use, you need not identify which source character set employed in the document. VNI 4.0 will detect the source character set and perform the conversion accordingly. Secondly, you can convert your document anywhere in the edit session (WinWord, NotePad, WordPad, and even in e-mail) without having to exit as in prior versions.

With a click of a button, your document will be converted to VNI-ANSI format using one of the VNI fonts (i.e. fonts that begin with VNI-), regardless of which source character set being used. This unique conversion technique is called "in-place conversion" for its characteristics, meaning the conversion is performed in your edit session where the document is being worked on. The beauty of it is that the text will be displayed in full legible Vietnamese accents without special characters used in other formats.

Besides, in WinWord, you may choose a target character set and font for the conversion should you elect not to use VNI defaults (i.e. VNI-ANSI character set and VNI-Times font). After the conversion however, only font is to be changed. The format of your document will remain unchanged.

My editor friend also indicates that, with VNI Tan Ky’s in-place conversion technique, he could download e-mail and other articles from any Web page on the Internet quickly and convert them from and to any character set he desires. To achieve this task, he just needs to highlight the text to be converted, copy into either WinWord or NotePad, and with a click of a button, the document will be converted to VNI-ANSI format. Then use cut and paste commands to copy back into your document. Just like magic!. E-mail in VIQR format can also be easily converted to VNI-ANSI using this technique.

If you need to convert multiple documents simultaneously, AnyToAny is the answer. It is part of the new VNI Tan Ky 4.0 for multiple conversion purposes. All you need is click, drag and drop the desired file into the conversion box (visible when running AnyToAny), AnyToAny will detect its source character set automatically. Next, select your target character set and font for each file. Once the files to be converted are in place, with a click of a button, AnyToAny will perform the conversion for all files accordingly. It can also convert RTF files.

The auto-detection feature in VNI Tan Ky is extremely accurate. I have never needed to know the source character set of any document I’ve worked on for the conversion. VNI does it all for me. With such superb and practical design, I strongly believe that I will survive the onslaught of today’s "limbo in character set madness".

If you have used VNI Tan Ky 2.95 before, you should be familiar with the macro typing (Toác Kyù) capability of VNI. Macro typing allows you to replace long words or names with a set of pre-defined macros for faster typing. I’ve used a few macros such as vowels aâ, eâ, oâ in Telex mode and found that they are extremely useful.

VNI release 4.0 has gone a step further: to support macro typing for more than 40 different languages. VNI supports most of European languages from Albanian to Latin and Russian. Moreover, Laotian, Cambodian, and Burmese are also supported.

It allows you to use any of the above languages in Windows or NT without having to change the base character set. This is a major enhancement and useful for users since they are now able to use both Vietnamese and their native language on the same native Windows version written for that particular language.

Since VNI Tan Ky also allows you to define your own macros, you may invent special macros for a certain purpose or application. VNI has supplied a set of default macros and special characters such as ª, °, ©, ®, §, ƒ, £, ‰, », «, etc. to help you identify quickly when needed. You may define (c) for ©, (r) for ®, (f) for ƒ, or (%) for ‰.

Had VNI not provided these special characters in the form of macros, it would certainly be a time consuming and complex process inserting one into your document: first press and hold Alt key, then press 0; then select the special character desired using the numeric pad on the right of the keyboard.

In the new upgrade release 4.0, VNI font library has also been upgraded to include more than 40 new TrueType fonts whose names begin with VNI but without the dash (-) as in prior releases.

Besides the full set of standard Vietnamese characters and accents in all VNI fonts, they also support dozens of other languages, as described above; due largely to the complete isolating accent placement technique employed by VNI in designing their fonts.

Fonts for non-roman languages such as Laotian and Cambodian usually employ separate character set. VNI has supplied several different character sets for such languages: VNI Cambodia, VNI Laos, VNI Russia, VNI Greece, etc. (many Eastern-European countries use the same character set with Russia).

The VNI technical personnel being interviewed also said that the new fonts are fully compatible with VNI-ANSI character set. No transparent discrepancies are to be noticed between the upgraded font sets and their predecessors. They are interchangeable whether the document is prepared on Macintosh, UNIX, or Windows operating system.

For example, if your document is prepared using MS Word on a Macintosh machine, it can be open for read or edit using WinWord on a Windows machine without conversion. Moreover, Web pages designed for Internet using VNI character set and fonts on Windows, NT, Mac/OS, or UNIX are also interchangeable. Another word, no conversion is needed when working with the document on different platforms.

Another great advantage of the new release worth mentioning is that Web pages designed on the Internet for Windows, using VNI character set and fonts are fully displayed without truncation. Web pages designed with other character sets on NT or Mac/OS often lack the full display compatibility, thus causing truncation on some Vietnamese characters and accents, rendering them unreadable. It would be beneficial if the Web designers and other software engineers working with NT platform would take this particular advantage into consideration when designing Vietnamese Web pages or standardizing certain design guidelines because NT is fast becoming the industry standard for operating system.

WebEye for Vietnamese Web Pages

WebEye, as known as "Mat Viet Xuyen Mang" in Vietnamese, is a new software designed by VNI to help you read all Vietnamese Web pages on the Internet with full, legible Vietnamese characters and accents.

WebEye is packaged together with VNI Tan Ky 4.0. It is also considered a "magic wand" for Vietnamese language on the Internet and one of the major enhancements included in this new VNI Tan Ky release.

One of the advantages of WebEye is that your Web browser (Netscape or Internet Explorer) needs not be reconfigured to support WebEye. Internet character set and its associated fonts are pre-loaded with VNI Tan Ky 4.0 so that you would not have to select an appropriate character set or download fonts from the Internet when browsing the Vietnamese Web sites.

Since I am a frequent visitor at popular Vietnamese Web pages and a avid e-mail user, WebEye is a must-have tool for Vietnamese language on the Internet for its excellent design and functionality. Long before WebEye becomes available, I have often had great difficulty reading special characters in place of the accents (+, *, ?, etc.) with Vietnamese language used in VIQR format. Now with WebEye, I can read Vietnamese with full legible accents as easy as in a book.

Web surfers who want more than just surfing the Net are not to be ignored in the new lease either. VNI has designed a special 7-bit font called VNI-Internet Mail for Vietnamese e-mail on the Internet for such need. Unlike common errors experienced with other 8-bit character sets and fonts, VNI-Internet Mail is designed specifically to help you read and write Vietnamese e-mail with full legible accents and also to retain its original format and contents.

I am extremely pleased with WebEye when using WebEye for my e-mail. Truncation and annoying special characters seen in VIQR format completely disappeared. Instead, they are replaced by legible Vietnamese accent marks as in prints. My e-mail now contains only legible accents as seen in 8-bit character set.

To use VNI-Internet Mail for the e-mail program in Web browser such as Netscape, just click on Options command, select General Preferences, select Fonts, then click on Choose Font for Fixed Font, and select VNI-Internet Mail font.

The font selection needs to be setup only once for your Web browser. From then on, every time you work with e-mail, just select the VNI-Internet Mail font from VNI Tan Ky font list, then use VNI typing method to compose your e-mail. Voilaø! You can totally forget about special and zigzag characters in VIQR and certainly, you will find it much more comfortable and enjoyable working with your e-mail.

After downloading, follow the steps described above to setup your Web browser to use VNI-Internet Mail font for your e-mail.

In addition, since I started using VNI-Internet Mail font, e-mail written in VIQR format is even more readable. At least 50% of special characters used in VIQR are replaced by legible accents.

Looking back the past years, VNI has relentlessly and continuously demonstrated their effort, talent and ingenuity in bringing us such excellent software products with superb designs in functionality and practicality to support the use of Vietnamese language on computer. From the early Vietnamese for DOS, Ventura Publisher, Windows, with the standardized "Letter First, Accent Next" typing method and "isolated accent placement" font design technique, to the latest VNI Tan Ky for Windows, 95, NT, and Macintosh, VNI has earned our trust and satisfaction for their excellent products. What might have motivated them for their relentless effort and dedication?

"VNI is a group of dedicated and talented professionals who have chosen a solid long-term service strategy," said Mr. Hoà Thaønh Vieät, chief executive officer and president of VNI, during an interview with the author of this article. This explains why all VNI products are now equipped with protection key to prevent unauthorized duplication. During the 80’s, VNI products were sold without protection key. This opened up a golden opportunity for piracy. "Our copyrighted software products have been illegally reproduced in bulk by computer manufacturers based mostly from Taiwan and Hong Kong. After a few weeks with promising high sales volume at the initial offering, we couldn’t make a single sale the next week while the demand was still high! It’s a costly lesson for us. We must protect our products from piracy, or we wouldn’t survive in such a highly competitive market, nor be able to invest in new product development/enhancement to satisfy the consumers’ demand," bitterly recalled Mr. Vieät .

When asked about current piracy of VNI software products in Vietnam, Mr. Vieät is optimistic that the government would soon tighten copyright laws to protect legitimate software manufacturers before it’s too late. Not only those abroad, domestic software manufacturers have long suffered similar dilemma without government protection. They concede that despite their software products are the result of months, even years, of hard work and effort, they are lucky if they could break even, let alone profits, which are virtually nil due to widespread piracy in huge volumes.

Mr. Vieät also firmly believes enforcing copyright laws is not necessarily anti-social. It would be, in fact, a mutual benefit. He points to United States as an example: the number of inventors, designers, and manufacturers have steadily increased in the past decades with marvelous products. The reason? United States is one of the toughest, if not the toughest, nations in the world strictly enforcing the copyright laws to protect legitimate products from piracy. Heavy fines and lengthy imprisonment have deterred most would-be counterfeiters from committing the crime. The result? United States is the leading country in terms of new patents issued each year because manufacturers firmly believe their products would be protected, thus enabling them to re-invest profits further in research and development for new products. Consequently, the society as a whole would greatly benefit from such strict, and rightfully so, enforcement.

You may purchase VNI Tan Ky 4.0 for Win32 at local bookstores and computer retailers. Or you may order directly from VNI at: