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I have Sogou Pinyin on Ubuntu and things work fine, but I haven't been able to figure out how to type Pinyin with tone marks, e.g. 'mǎ', etc.

I've looked into the settings but found no option like that. I've searched online (in Chinese) but results I get show that Windows Sogou has a very different, more comprehensive menu structure with more options. The Ubuntu version seems like a dumbed down version of that, nothing close.

I've tried typing U + Unicode, e.g. U+0101 for 'ā' but that's a hassle. Copying from an online tool is also cumbersome, I have to type a lot of tone marked pinyin.

Has anyone run into this issue?

Edit: Screenshot of Sogou Settings menu on Ubuntu.

enter image description here

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  • I think it only works by adding special characters or something like that. You might want to try something like this instead: askubuntu.com/questions/32764/using-alt-keycode-for-accents
    – Mou某 ♦
    Commented Feb 5, 2018 at 15:17
  • @user3306356 Thank you, I know about this, and this was my 1st attempt of workaround, but sadly, for the macron accent (long bar, 1st tone in pinyin) has no alt key combination working for me, so I made myself a list of U+XXXX unicode combinations, but it is really awkward this way. I can't believe Sogou doesn't ship with tone mark input on Ubuntu.
    – TeXnophobe
    Commented Feb 5, 2018 at 16:05
  • The Chinese material I read said you need to use 搜狗's "软键盘" (virtual keyboard): zhidao.baidu.com/question/241699992.html 你好，先将搜狗输入法中文改成英文，然后点击菜单或在图标上点右键，选“软键盘”再选“拼音字母”，你就会在软键盘上看到带音标的字母了。比如你要打“nǐ hǎo"就先打“n ho”然后再在软键盘上插入“ǐ“和ǎ就可以了。搞一搞吧，很简单的。
    – Mou某 ♦
    Commented Feb 5, 2018 at 16:21
  • Another one: zhidao.baidu.com/question/1732956540458549787.html 搜狗没有这个功能，目前任何输入法也没有这个功能，想注音只能用特殊符号 搜狗状态下，ctrl+shift+B，特殊符号，拼音/注音
    – Mou某 ♦
    Commented Feb 5, 2018 at 16:22
  • pinyin IME is not designed for this. Most people do not need to type any marked pinyin. So Chinese IME usually do not have this function, not limited to Sogou pinyin or pinyin.
    – fefe
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 12:18

1 Answer 1

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I struggled for many months to work out how produce Pinyin with the tone marks. Eventually I managed it by installing the Ubuntu ibus (Intelligent Input Bus - core) currently using version 1.5.11. I also have ibus-pinyin installed but to get the Latin alphabet with the tone marks including ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ as well as the normal ū ú ǔ ù and of course all the other vowels just by typing the tone number you also need to install ibus-m17n . This has the input method Chinese Hanyu Pinyin(m17n) as just described and also tonepy(m17n) which gives you a nice trimmed down list of the simplified Chinese characters filtered by the tone number you type when you want to type the characters instead of the Pinyin. Probably too late for the original questioner but this information is so difficult to find on-line I thought it was worth adding for future reference.

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