Tibetan Input Method for Apple iOS 4.2 devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch)

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Configuration - check your OS-X version

Note: The following works for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch with minimum operating system version iOS 4.2.

You can check your OS-X version by starting Settings and then select General / About. The field Version should show a number > 4.2.
If your OS-X version is below 4.2, you need to update your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch by connecting it to iTunes and selecting Update within iTunes after the device has connected to iTunes.

Once your device runs OS-X 4.2 or higher, configure the keyboard


Img. 1 Settings / General / Keyboard	Img. 2 International Keyboards >	Img. 3 Add New Keyboard... >

Start the Settings app
Select General and Keyboard (Img. 1)
Click on International Keyboards (Img. 2)
Choose Add New Keyboard (Img. 3) and select the Tibetan keyboard. Note: for the on-screen keyboard there is no difference between the three different layouts. You need to connect a bluetooth keyboard to have access to the different layouts.

Using the Tibetan keyboard

For Tibetan Unicode dictionary applications, check:


Img. 4 Notes App: press red marked button on soft-keyboard for Tibetan	Img. 5 The Tibetan keyboard	Tibetan on iPhone iOS 4.2

Start an application (e.g. the Notes app).
As soon as the on-screen keyboard is visible (Img. 4) select the button that is marked in red (the globe).
This will start the Tibetan on-screen keyboard (Img. 5)
Press the globe-button again to switch to Western keyboard.

The Tibetan keyboard layout


Img. 6 Main layout, marked in red: the stacking key	Img. 7 The shift layout	Img. 8 The numerical layout

	This section contains Tibetan script. Without proper Tibetan rendering support configured, you may see other symbols instead of Tibetan script.

There are three keyboards:

the main keyboard that gets active as soon as the Tibetan keyboard is selected (Img. 6),
the shift-keyboard gets active when pressing the shift-key (Img. 7),
and the numerical-keyboard, activated by the ༡༢༣-key (Img. 8).

Stacking of Tibetan syllables

In order to compose Tibetan stacks, the iOS on-screen keyboard uses a stacking-key (marked in red in Img. 6). The stacking key subjoins the next letter typed after the stacking key and it can be used multiple times: rgyu is typed as r <stack> g '<stack> y u.

Example: To type རྒྱུ, you select ར, <stacking-key>, ག, <stacking-key>, ཡ, ཨུ (only the vowel sign here).

Special characters

Some keys can compose additional characters when pressed for two seconds.

The following table shows additional special characters that appear when the base-key is pressed for two seconds:


Img. 9 Additional special characters	Img. 10 Additional special characters	Img. 11 Additional special characters	Img. 12 Additional special characters


Img. 13 Additional special characters	Img. 14 Additional special characters	Img. 15 Additional special characters	Img. 16 Additional special characters


Img. 17 Additional special characters	Img. 18 Additional special characters	Img. 19 Additional special characters	Img. 20 Additional special characters