An earlier post said to go to the pc control panel and select pinyin as an additional input language. However, pinyin was not one of the options under the list of languages. Any other ideas? (Is it listed under the east asian language listings, for which I need to hunt down some disks that came with our computer umpteen years ago?? If so, wish me lotsa luck locating the disk!)
I have made a list of "ALT + number" codes to produce the various vowels with diacritical marks to indicate the 4 tones. For example, ALT160 produces á and ALT141 is ì I learned to do this with Spanish and French, which was faster for me to code into my brain than trying to relearn a new keyboard layout. But is there something faster/simpler for pinyin? BTW having a mark over the letter is much easier for me to decipher than reading a word with a tone number at the end. Maybe that's just me.
I have used NJSTAR to convert pinyin to characters. Is there something more convenient available?