Type Pinyin in Mac

I found a way to type in Chinese Pinyin in my Mac computer. It is very simple to set it up. First, you have to enable the U.S. Extended input from System Preferences|Language & Text|Input Sources. This is one time setup:



This input has a list of phonetic or dialect symbols which can be added to a character. Those symbols include Pinyin four tones and special ü:

First tone: option+a
Second tone: option+e
Third tone: option+v
Fourth tone: option+`
¨: option+u

To input pinyin, type a tone first, and then input a vow, such as a, e, i, o, u. To type in ü, type in u after option+u. Those key combinations are straightforward and it takes very short time to get used to.

I use this method to edit a document of transcript for a podcast by Sun Yat-Sen University. The application is NeoOffice for Mac. In order to align up Pinyin with Chinese characters, I define my tabs first with 1.5cm interval.