VnKeyVieejt→Việt
Every app
Messaging, the browser, chat apps: VnKey works in any text field. Shift, automatic capitals and the Fn keys behave as they always do.
Nokia E72 · Symbian S60 3rd Edition FP2
Type tiếng Việt in every app on your Nokia E72.
VnKey brings Telex, the typing method of Unikey, to Symbian. Press plain letters on the QWERTY keyboard and Vietnamese appears in Messaging, the browser, chat apps and every other text field.
Features
Unikey, on a phone from 2009
Everything you expect from Telex on a computer, working inside the phone's own apps, with the phone's own keyboard.
CtrlSpace
One key to switch
Ctrl+Space switches between Vietnamese and English. A small [V] or [E] sits in the bottom bar by the clock and steps aside in full-screen games and video. Other keys can be set in triggers.txt.
tẽt→text
English words stay English
With spell check on, a word that cannot be Vietnamese gets its keys back as you finish it: tẽt becomes text, ưindow becomes window.
ko→không
Shortcuts (gõ tắt)
ko → không, dc → được, vn → Việt Nam, in the case you typed them. Add your own to macros.txt on the memory card.
hòatraditional·hoàmodern
Your tone style
Traditional (hòa, thúy, khỏe) or modern (hoà, thuý, khoẻ). The tone moves as the word grows: hòa, then n, gives hoàn.
Tiếng Việt/English
Set it and forget it
VnKey starts with the phone and turns Telex back on by itself. Its settings screen is in Vietnamese or English, and every letter is precomposed Unicode.
How it works
It works with the phone's own keyboard input
VnKey adds a small input plugin that the phone loads into each app. The phone's own input method stays in charge of the keys; VnKey only fixes up the word.
- You press a keyVnKey notes the word before the cursor.
- The phone types itWith its usual case, Shift and Fn layer, as if VnKey were not there.
- VnKey rewrites the wordThe Telex engine turns the keys into Vietnamese, in place, right after the key.
Telex
Telex in a minute
Type the letter, then the key that adds its mark or tone. The order is forgiving: marks and tones can also come at the end of the word.
| Letters | ||
|---|---|---|
| aa | â | |
| aw | ă | |
| ee | ê | |
| oo | ô | |
| ow | ơ | |
| uw | ư | or w alone |
| dd | đ | |
| Tones | ||
|---|---|---|
| s | á | sắc |
| f | à | huyền |
| r | ả | hỏi |
| x | ã | ngã |
| j | ạ | nặng |
| z | a | no tone |
| Whole words | ||
|---|---|---|
| toans | toán | tone last |
| vietej | việt | mark last |
| nguoiwf | người | one w for ươ |
| hoafn | hoàn | tone moves |
| ass | as | twice to undo |
| thuowr | thuở | at the word's end |
Every example on this page, the typing demo included, was produced by VnKey's own Telex engine.
Install
Get it on your phone
One package, installed like any other Symbian app.
- Download the latest
vnkey-x.y.z.sisxfrom Releases, in the phone's browser or on a computer and then onto the phone. - Install it. Everything goes to the phone memory (C:), so VnKey keeps working with the memory card out.
- Open VnKey and set Telex mọi ứng dụng (Telex in all apps) to Bật (On). The screens are in Vietnamese at first; Ngôn ngữ switches them to English.
- Try it: in Messaging, type Vieejt and a space to get Việt. Ctrl+Space switches to English and back.
What you need
- A Nokia E72 (S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2, Symbian OS 9.3). VnKey is built for it and tested on it. Other FP2 phones with a QWERTY keyboard may work but have not been tried.
- A hacked phone (InstallServer and Open4All patches). The input plugin loads into every app, and a self-signed package can only do that on a patched phone.
Good to know
- Turning it off: set Telex in all apps to Off, answer No, and restart the phone. Switching it off on the spot can restart the phone, so the restart is the safe way.
- Updating or removing: turn it off and restart first.
- Emergency off: make a folder named
offinE:\VnKey\(File manager can) and the plugin leaves every app alone. - Privacy: VnKey keeps its log on the phone, in
E:\VnKey\vnkey.log, and sends nothing anywhere. Password fields are never logged.
Build
Build it yourself
The build runs in a public Docker image with the S60 3rd Edition FP2 SDK, GnuPoc and GCCE, so a Mac, Linux or Windows (WSL) machine with Docker is all it takes.
GitHub Actions runs the same build on every push. The packages on the Releases page come from it, built from the tagged commit.
# the Telex engine's tests, with the host's compiler
$ bash symbian/test/run.sh
# the package: symbian/sis/vnkey.sisx
$ bash symbian/group/docker-build.sh