Chinese Pinyin Typer: I have uploaded a new program to type romanized Chinese characters with tones. This program is in beta, so it has a descriptive filename, but it is serviceable enough to use. 

Type a1 to get ā, a2 to get á, etc.

Type A1 to get Ā, etc.

Type v0 to get ü, v1 to get ǖ, etc.

Known problems

An extra space is currently created in Word. I may fix this problem in the future, but probably not anytime soon. 

Not all the characters are supported in every program (e.g. a3). This means my program will either type a regular character with no tonal marks, or sometimes will type a misshapen character (e.g. a3) where the tonal mark is oddly placed. This is the fault of those programs, so there is nothing I can do on my end.

Coming Soon:

PDF Copy-Paster: added support for the following PDF software:

• PDF-Xchange Editor
• Nuance Power PDF
• Foxit PhantomPDF
• Foxit Reader (fix)
• many other PDF readers (see below)

In the meantime, I have created a version of the program that will work for any running program, so will work for any unsupported PDF software, though it should be disabled (Ctrl+Shift+D, or right-click system tray icon and click ‘disable’) when you want to copy without all the linebreaks being removed.

Replacing the key terms with the right number of underlines is really annoying, so I wrote this script this morning. Simply highlight the text you want to replace with underlines and hit Ctrl+Shift+U. By default, the program will replace alphanumeric characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9) as well as accents in Spanish, German, and French. It will leave all other characters such as spaces and punctuation alone.

This script is still in beta and I’m not sure what to call it yet so for now it’s called “Blanker” and it has a default icon (a white H on green background). If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know! Also, this beta version does not start automatically when your computer boots, so remember to run it first when you want to use the Ctrl+Shift+U hotkey.

EXE file: Blanker.v1.0.exe

Source code: Blanker.v1.0.ahk

Since it’s almost Christmas, here’s a short Christmas-themed example. Do you know all the words?

Download here, source code here.

Note: Esperanto’s special characters are rarer than those found in say Spanish. As such, it is only supported by Unicode, not ANSI and other more limited charsets. If you have trouble typing on a certain website or in a certain program, please make sure it’s not that program’s fault before contacting me. You can do this by seeing if other ways of entering Esperanto characters also fail.

You can download it here.

French has a particularly large number of different accents, making it hard to include every accent while keeping the program intuitive. Here are the final key combinations I came up with:

If you want to learn more about what PDF Copy-Paster does, read my original blog post here.

The key mappings are still a work in progress (please email me if you have any suggestions), but here they are:

To type grave marks (à, è, ì, ò, ù), hold down CapsLock and type the corresponding letter. To type them in uppercase (À, È, Ì, Ò, Ù), just hold down Shift as well.

To type acute marks (é, í, ó, ú), hold down the ’ key and type the corresponding letter. To type them in uppercase (è, ì, ò, ù), hold down the Shift key as well.

To type the very rare circonflesso (î/Î), hit CapsLock+c to type the lowercase, and Shift+CapsLock+c to type the uppercase.

You can also type special symbols like €, «», ºª. You can see the key mappings for these in the quick reference guide below.

Please note that in order to allow the CapsLock to be used, the program modifies how your CapsLock  and ” keys work a little. When the program is running, you need to hit your CapsLock key twice to turn CapsLock on or off, and the ” key twice to type “.

Changes:

1. To toggle CapsLock on and off, simply double-tap the CapsLock key.

2. Due to very popular demand, there is now an option to install the program and have it startup automatically.

While these are the only two changes, this is a pretty major update, mostly due to the new startup feature. I’ve tested extensively on my own computer, but I would not be surprised if these changes introduce some new bugs for some users (most probably those with non-standard keyboard layouts).

This newest version of the programs now allows users to quickly enable/disable the program’s functionality by simply left-clicking on the program icon in the system tray. When the program is disabled, the CapsLock key’s normal functionality is restored and cannot be used to type accents.

Download

Spanish Accents CapsLock.exe

German Accents CapsLock.exe

German Quick Reference

Changes:

1.Shift+CapsLock+letter to type capital accent marks.

You can type capital accent marks now by typing Shift+CapsLock+letter. The old way (Tab+letter) still works though, so if that’s working for you, you can keep using that method.

2.Turn on CapsLock by right-clicking the program icon.

Last version, I disabled the CapsLock key to prevent CapsLock from being accidentally turned on when typing accents. Several users emailed me about this, so now you can turn on/off CapsLock by right-clicking the program icon. However, the actual CapsLock key will remain disabled. I think this is a good compromise so that users don’t accidentally activate CapsLock, but those who need to use the CapsLock key for some reason can still occasionally use it without too much hassle. However, if for some reason you need a hotkey to toggle CapsLock quickly, please email me or leave a comment below, and I’ll write you a custom version.

3. Type € (the euro sign) by typing either CapsLock+4 or Shift+CapsLock+4.

4. Help File for Spanish version fixed.

The old Spanish version’s help file was accidentally replaced by the German version.

Some pretty big changes:

1. Merged US and UK versions. This means that it doesn’t matter what kind of keyboard you have any more.

2. The Caps Lock key will be disabled. This is to prevent accidentally turning on CapsLock when typing accents.

3. Instead of a hotkey, the help file can now be triggered by right clicking the tray icon and clicking “Help.”

4. Significantly improved compatability with other programs with hotkeys involving the Tab key.

5. Admin mode shouldn’t be necessary any more, but this is based on a limited sample of users.

6. To minimize confusion, I’m not linking to the source code here. You can look for it on the “Downloads” page.

7. Some minor stuff like no more underscores in the names and smaller file sizes due to compression.

Grab them while they’re hot!

Will this program work for other typing test websites?
Well, the actual program itself should work for nearly everything because it simply types the characters one-by-one, just like a human would do it. However, the part where you copy the text using Firebug will likely not work for other typing test websites.

Instructions

1. Run this program.
2. Install the excellent “Firebug” extension on your Firefox.
3. Enter a race on typeracer.com.
4. Hit F12 to open up the Firebug window.
5. Make sure the Firebug window is open to the “HTML” tab.
6. Hit Ctrl+Shift+K to type in the search box.
7. Search for a phrase in the text like “farcical aquatic ceremony.” Hit Enter.
8. Click on the highlighted phrase that Firebug found.
9. Hit Ctrl+C to copy the text to your clipboard.
10. Click in the input box on typeracer.
11. Hit Ctrl+Shift+U.
12. Type the first word in the text (in green and underlined).
13. Hit Ctrl+V to paste the rest of the text.
14. Hit Enter.
15. Either get disqualified outright or asked to take a special typing test with a CAPTCHA to verify that you didn’t cheat.

Background: I created this in about five minutes (it’s four lines of code) after I was defeated by a friend. I could have created a much more elaborate program, one that does even more of the work for you, and to try to get around the CAPTCHA test with OCR, but I didn’t really see the point; I’m not so vain as to want to get my name in the list of high scores, and I wasn’t even sure if the CAPTCHA could be beaten anyway. If you want to do this, create your own damn program. This was only for a one-time prank to blow away my friend with a blistering 270 WPM score with 100% accuracy.

Screenshots

Proof that I was able to cheat:

Future Development

As with all my programs, please contact me to report a bug or suggest a new feature. This is especially important for this program because I consider this program to be “feature-complete” and probably won’t be working on it anymore unless someone emails me with a interesting suggestion.

Download

TypeRacer Trickster.exe

Update 1/3/11: There is now no separate UK version since I figured out how to workaround the problem. Click here to learn more and to download the programs.

Update 10/24/10: Found that for certain applications, like Microsoft Office, you need to run my program in administrative mode. This only affects the UK versions because I had to use a different method of intercepting keystrokes for the UK keyboard layout. Unfortunately, there isn’t much I can do on my end to fix this problem; blame Microsoft for heavy-handed security “features.”

After several reports of users having some trouble using Spanish_Accents_CapsLock with UK keyboard layouts, I finally figured out the problem. The solution isn’t perfect though, as it requires disabling the normal CapsLock functionality (not a big deal), and also uses a “keyboard hook”, which may be falsely detected as a virus because many keyloggers use them. Hence, I will be publishing two versions, a normal one and a UK one, of all subsequent updates to this program and the German version.

Note: If you have a UK-layout keyboard, please use this UK version.

After updating the Spanish accents version, I figured I’d do the same for the German version. Basically, this increases compatibility for people with keyboard layouts otehr than the standard US QWERTY keyboard. For example, if you have a French AZERTY keyboard, you may have had trouble using the old version.

What you need to know is that instead of using the ` key to type capital accents like Ä or Ü, you now hold down the Tabs key instead. Also, if you ever forget the key combos, you can press Shift+Tab to see a quick refrence guide.

I’d originally wrote Spanish_Accents_CapsLock for people with standard, US, QWERTY keyboard layouts, but people with alternative keyboard layouts like the French AZERTY keyboard have been having problems because for them, the ` key is actually quite important to type in French.

Therefore, I rewrote the half of the program that dealt with typing capital accented letters like Á or É. It now uses “Tab” instead of the ` key so it should be universally compatible with all keyboard layouts (what keyboard doesn’t have “tab”?). I’ve also added an internal help file that you can access by pressing Shift+Tab. It will popup a quick reference guide of all the various key combinations.