Input methods

Toaq's Latin writing system features many letter with diacritics, which are tricky to type on a standard keyboard configured for English. Here are some solutions.

Desktop computers

Compose key

You can set up a compose key on your computer, which will change the behavior of one of the keys on your keyboard to "compose" the next two keypresses into one character — for example CapsLock ? a becomes ả.

On Linux, this might not even involve installing anything! Look for "compose key" plus your distro name.

On Windows, WinCompose is pretty good.

Here's how to type Toaq-specific characters in the default ruleset:

Character	Combo
	' + vowel
	" + vowel
	? + vowel
	^ + vowel
	` + vowel
	~ + vowel
dotless i (ı)	. + i
left quote («)	< + <
right quote (»)	> + >

Kảıchuo

This is a little tool by User:Lynn that runs in your browser, available here. You type something like Kiai ji kato/ da and it turns it into Kỉaı jí káto da. (Wow! It knows jí is a pronoun and automatically adds .)

Yell at her to add mobile support!

AutoHotkey

This official AutoHotkey script will convert a/ into á, etc. Oh, it's actually outdated (has the old instead of the new ).

Kanakey

User:Hoaqgio uses a custom Python script that can be found at https://github.com/toaq/kanakey. The way it works is that the script always runs in the background (you start it on login) and when you want to type Toaq, you type alt+; followed by the Toaq you want in the format of "Mai4 ji2 suq2 da.", and finally you just type ; alone. Then the script erases what you typed and replaces it with pretty Toaq. Unfortunately it has two pretty inconvenient issues, one of which is that it currently can't show an icon in the system tray to indicate whether the script is in "listening mode" or not (which means you can accidentally put it in listening mode and leave it there for a while) and the other of which is that if you have non-text data on your system clipboard at the time you try to use the script, it will simply crash. User:Hoaqgio recommends not using this unless you really have no better alternative!

Phones

There's an Android custom keyboard app called "MultiLing O" where, allegedly "you slide your finger from the ,/AltGr key and you get a tone picker there". It is also decently customizable.

In general, on many phone keyboards you can long-press a vowel to get some accents, though usually not the hook. You can install a Vietnamese keyboard layout for that one, and switch between layouts, and suffer. Or use sparse tone marking.

Sad alternatives

ASCII tone markers

You can always write the ASCII-friendly /"?^\~ tone markers after words like this, usefully combined with sparse tone marking:

Hio ka. Bu bo^ ji/ sa gi kaichuo rao\ ni/ da.

Or tone number digits 234567:

Hio ka. Bu bo5 ji2 sa gi kaichuo rao6 ni2 da.

And you will be understood.

Vietoaq

For a bit, a Vietnamese Telex equivalent called Vietoaq was popular, where the idea was to use consonants at the end of a syllable to represent tone.

For example, lé lë lẻ lê lè lẽ is written lep lex len let lek lef.

To make matters worse, léq lëq lẻq lêq lèq lẽq is written, by diehard Vietoaq oldbies, as leb lez lem led leg lev.

This was back when compound words used , and lē lēq were written ler lel. So, tóaqkūq became toabkul.

Eventually came Diet Vietoaq, which just puts one of pxntkf, marking the tone for the whole word, at the end of the word: tóaqkūq becomes toaqkuqp. In that sense, it is more like the "ASCII tone markers" in the previous section.