Behold the Table Driven Text Service, Part 1 (Starting with a dictionary simple in every way)

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2008/01/22 07:16 -08:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2008/01/22/7179223.aspx

Prior posts in the series:

• 0 (You have to start somewhere)

To work with this file, you will want to right-click on the link and save if to a text file, the name should be MSDN_TableTextService_Simple.txt.

Of course you can change the name, but the file actually contain entries that point to the name so be sure to edit the entries if you edit the name.

This dictionary is defined to convert digit characters (1 to 9) to Roman numerals (Ⅰ to Ⅸ) or dingbat circled sans-serif digits (① to ⑨).

Note that result of conversion is not the combination of Latin alphabet characters for making Roman numerals such as double or triple "I" characters, or combination of the "I" and "X" characters. This mapping particular table uses the Unicode Roman numerals which are located at U+2160 to U+2168.

Note that you can actually define them any way you like -- even including the Roman numerals and the Latin script equivalents as different candidates!

The conversion table is one you can see yourself if you open the file and is defined as follows (in part, of course);

[Text]
"1" = "Ⅰ"
"1" = "ⅰ"
"1" = "①"
"2" = "Ⅱ"
"2" = "ⅱ"
"2" = "②"
"3" = "Ⅲ"
"3" = "ⅲ"
"3" = "③"

To add the file to your own Vista or later machine, here are the directions:

1) Use an elevated command prompt!¹

2) Copy MSDN_TableTextService_Simple.txt dictionary file to the "%ProgramFiles%\MSDN Sample TIP" directory.

3) Execute the below command (note that the third parameter "RegisterProfile" should be case sensitive).

Rundll32 "%ProgramFiles%\Windows NT\TableTextService\TableTextService.dll" RegisterProfile MSDN_TableTextService_Simple.txt

4) You will see the below confirmation message box, to which you should press "OK":

Okay, now it is available in Vista!

The next thing to do is to enable “MSDN Sample TableTextService (simple)” on your desktop.

Simple steps:

1) Log in to any user account.

2) Check "MSDN Sample TableTextService (simple)" from English (United States) – Keyboard tree in General tab, Add… push button in the Text Services and Input Languages portion of the Regional and Language Options control panel applet, Keyboards and Languages tab, Change keyboards… push button.

And press OK. You will now see it added to your list of Input Languages:

And you will see that you now have the option in your Language Bar under English (United States), and you can choose either one of them:

Now of course the Language Bar contains the locale names there fore me because I have those other input languages installed; if you fon't then you will just see the Language Bar without the locale name there.

I'll set things up that way for the next few screenshots so you can see things both ways....

Now, let's use the "MSDN Sample TableTextService (simple)" IME in application.

1) Run any application. In this case, I'm going to use notepad.

2) Click the Keyboard Layout button on the Language Bar. You can see the pull down menu listing two keyboard layouts:

3) Select the second one which is "MSDN Sample TableTextService (simple)" from the pull down menu. The Language Bar should be changed as below:

4) Press "1" or "2" or any numerical number in notepad. You could see a small window under the caret in notepad with added your typed numerical number. For example, type "1":

5) Press the "Space" key which means to convert your typed character. You will now see a candidate list corresponding to your typed character. In this case, after typing "1" and "Space":

6) For the actual character injection into the application to get your prefered character to notepad, you can move the highlight by up/down arrow keys and press "Enter" key or you can press the left mouse button on your preferred character on candidate list window.

For example, you can type some numerals 1, 2, and 3, then select some Roman numerals and dingbat circled sans-serif digits:

Okay, next up I'll talk about the three kinds of conversion -- and we'll start getting into these files!

1 - Please do not skip this step. I have had over two dozen complaints about various TDTS text files failing, and almost every failure was caused by not running the install line from an elevated command prompt.

This post brought to you by ① (U+2460, aka CIRCLED DIGIT ONE)

# Cory Nelson on Tuesday, January 22, 2008 8:22 PM:

# Sammy on Monday, March 17, 2008 11:03 PM:

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