English | Tiếng Việt

v7 Input Method

This project aims to analyze the Vietnamese language to develop a faster typing method by implementing word prediction based on partial input. For instance, inputting only x0ch2 should yield xin chào as the predicted output.

Completeness: v7 is basically better VNI, everything VNI can do, v7 also can do. So you can input any possible Vietnamese words with v7.

Use the below script to try v7 method!

Motivation

• The Vietnamese language consists of many diacritics, making typing in Vietnamese time-consuming due to the need for these diacritical marks.
• v7 aims to simplify Vietnamese typing by using only the initial consonant and tone to predict the intended words. For example, instead of typing tưởng tượng as tuong73 tuong75 (VNI) or tuongwr tuongwj (Telex), you can type t3t5 with v7!
• Naturally, this reduction in key usage leads to some information loss. For instance, the input t3t5 could also correspond to tiểu tiện, as 3 represents the hook tone hỏi and 5 represents the underdot tone nặng.
• This project analyzes and addresses these problems to ultimately introduce v7, enhancing the Vietnamese typing experience.

Overview

Input Style

v7 inherits both from former VNI and Telex.

• Special consonants:

  • g for both g and gh.
  • ng for both ng and ngh.
  • z for gi. (z6 → giúp, giết, giáp, ...)
  • dd for đ. (dd4 → đã, đãi, đỗ, ...) (Telex style)

• Tones (VNI style):

  • 0 for no tones: tuân, câm, tân...
  • 1 for normal acute: cấm, tiếng, tấn, thính... (compare with 6 to see the differences)
  • 2 for grave: tuần, cầm, tần...
  • 3 for hook: tẩn, cẩm, hỉ...
  • 4 for tilde: mãi, rã, phũ...
  • 5 for normal underdot: nhậm, phụng, độn, mạnh... (compare with 7 to see the differences)
  • 6 for entering/checked acute: cấp, tiếc, tất, thích... (everything with acute and ends with p, t, c, ch must be tone 6)
  • 7 for entering/checked underdot: nhập, phục, đột, mạch... (everything with underdot and ends with p, t, c, ch must be tone 7)

• Special vowels:

  • Lots of ă, â, ê, ô, ơ, ư when typing Vietnamese? Not a problem anymore because just typing a, e, o, u and v7 will predict the most suitable ones for you! This feature also helps reducing number of keys you have to type!

This 8-tone system follows the Vietnamese Eight-Tone Analysis.

Note: If you aren't familiar with 8-tone system, you can still config to use traditional VNI 6-tone. But using 8-tone system is highly recommended for much much better AI result!

Modes

v7 predicts the words/phrases users want to type by checking and ranking possible words/phrases. It operates in two modes:

Dictionary Mode

In this mode, v7 searches for matching phrases in the dictionary and ranks them based on trained usage frequency.

• Limitations:
  • Can only detect phrases present in the dictionary (although users can add more phrases to the dictionary).
  • No understanding of the context.
  • Effective for predicting single words or one phrase in the dictionary at a time.

AI Mode

This mode utilize v7gpt: a GPT-like model with a custom tokenizer only for v7, trained on a Vietnamese corpus, based on Andrej Karpathy's nanoGPT.

• Advantages:
  • Works in any circumstances.
  • Understands the context in which the user is writing to predict the most suitable next word.
  • Can effectively predict entire sentences at a time.

Future plans include combining both modes to create the most robust Vietnamese input method.

Run the App

This project uses Python 3.12.

Using Dictionary Mode

To run the app in Dictionary Mode, follow these steps:

1. Install the required packages:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

2. Start the application:

   python main.py --lang en --ai false
   # VNI 6-tone is not yet supported for Dictionary mode

Using AI Mode

To run the app in AI Mode, follow these steps:

1. Install the required packages for AI Mode (Torch is required):

   pip install -r requirements_ai.txt

2. Download the pretrained model checkpoint:

   gdown 1dDP0jIJ79syE6vt6QnVl05_4fYpuwrqd -O checkpoints/v7gpt.pth

3. Start the application:

   python main.py --lang en --ai true --vni_tones false 
   # use [--vni_tones true] if you want VNI 6-tone