ᠮᠠᠨᠵᡠ ᡥᡝᡵᡤᡝᠨ (Manju Hergen, the Manchu alphabet)
Manju IME is an input method editor (IME) for Windows, designed for learners of Manchu: a program that lets you type a script your keyboard has no keys for, here the Manchu script. You type the spelling of a Manchu word in Latin letters, and a small window beside the text, the candidate window, shows the word in Manchu letters; press Space, and the word goes into your document.
The candidate window shows one card for each form the highlighted letter can take, each card the whole word with that form, so you see how a letter changes with its place in the word, and a number key picks the form. Six input schemes let you type with a spelling you already know, and whichever of them you type with, the display scheme can show the letters typed in the spelling you learned, such as Möllendorff’s.
Manju IME enters only standard characters of Unicode, the standard that numbers every character of every script: the Manchu letters and punctuation, the variation selectors that pick another form of a letter, and the separators that set a suffix apart, all as Unicode defines them, and the Latin letters and symbols you type on a standard keyboard. It uses no private-use characters and no codes that only one font understands, so any font that follows Unicode draws the text. Each of the six input schemes, ways of spelling Manchu in Latin letters, is typed with the Latin letters of a standard keyboard.
The first three pictures below were taken in Windows 11, one frame for each key, on a web page written top to bottom in Microsoft Edge, and the caption under each names the input scheme it was typed with. The last one shows the candidate window in each of its eight themes.
hūwašabumbi (to raise, to bring up), typed with the Möllendorff input scheme: a tap of Shift after
u and after s gives ū and š, as
Tap Shift in the middle of a word describes.
An aphorism of Hippocrates in its Latin form (ars longa, vita brevis), in English, and in Manchu, our
translation; then suffixes after the - key. Typed with the Möllendorff input scheme: see
Switch between Latin and Manchu,
Punctuation, and Suffixes for the keys.
Every pair of letters that Noto Sans Mongolian, the font shipped with Manju IME, draws as one glyph, a single shape, typed with the Möllendorff input scheme; then the seven syllables of the Syllables table, typed with the Abkai input scheme. Letters drawn as one glyph shows the pairs more slowly, and Pick a form with the number keys shows a pair drawn apart.
The candidate window in its eight themes, sets of colours that the settings file
picks, after typing manju with the Möllendorff input scheme.
Using Manju IME has more pictures, with every key the IME uses.
| Windows | From version | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Windows 11 | 21H2 | Supported |
| Windows 10 | 22H2 | Uncertain (not tested) |
- A 64-bit Intel or AMD processor.
- Manju IME works only in programs that support Unicode text.
- A font for the Manchu script installed in Windows, such as Noto Sans Mongolian.
- Installing it needs administrator rights, because it registers Manju IME for the whole computer. On a computer your organisation manages, ask your IT staff. What Manju IME does to a computer lists every change it makes.
| Document | For | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Installing Manju IME | Users | Setup, page by page, and the uninstaller |
| Using Manju IME | Users | How typing works, the candidate window, every key, the input schemes, and the themes |
| Input Schemes | Users | The six input schemes compared letter by letter and syllable by syllable, the spellings typed with Shift, the letters each scheme does not use, the letters drawn as one glyph, and where each scheme comes from |
| Deploying Manju IME | IT staff | Unattended deployment with scripts for PowerShell, the command shell of Windows, and what Manju IME does to a computer |
Download the zip file of the latest release from the
Releases page and unzip it
into a folder you will keep. In the Installer folder, run Install Manju IME.exe, the setup program.
Installing Manju IME shows every page of Setup.
Deploying Manju IME covers unattended deployment with the PowerShell scripts.
Press Win+Space and pick Manju IME. Type a Manchu word in Latin letters, and press Space to enter it. Using Manju IME explains the candidate window and every key.
In the Installer folder, run Uninstall Manju IME.exe. The files stay in the folder.
Installing Manju IME shows the uninstaller.
- The code of Manju IME is licensed under the MIT License: see LICENSE, which also contains the third-party notices.
- The documentation, this README and the text and pictures in
docs, and the Refined Romanisation (draft) input scheme are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0): see docs/LICENSE.
- HarfBuzz, the text shaping engine: Manju IME joins Manchu letters with a C# port of HarfBuzz code.
- Noto Sans Mongolian: the font of the candidate window.
- Solarized, the colour scheme by Ethan Schoonover: the colours of the Solarized Dark and So Young themes.
- Weasel, the Windows front end of the RIME input method engine: Manju IME drew some inspiration from it.
- The makers of the five published input schemes: see Input Schemes.
- Claude Code by Anthropic, the AI coding agent that wrote the code and these documents to the author’s design and architecture, and Codex by OpenAI, which reviewed the releases.