There is indeed a Vietnamese keyboard layout that is included in all modern operating systems since
Windows 2000 (I don't know the exact time when it was included in other
OSes though). It's no different from US QWERTY layout except:
- Vietnamese-specific keys added in number/symbol key positions
- The keys' function swapped between typing characters and numbers/symbols.
There are also useless characters like cedilla Ç and OE ligature Œ that most Vietnamese people won’t have a clue what those are for.
So that means you can type Vietnamese without any 3ʳᵈ party software, although a bit uncomfortable.
However most people don't know this or consider this layout stupid because you cannot write the numbers and normal symbols like !@#$%^&... directly but you must type them with the AltGr modifier.
There is no keyboard produced based on this layout either, so nobody
uses this. Instead they use normal US QWERTY keyboards and VNI and Telex input method with some input method software (most commonly Unikey which replaced Vietkey) like others have said.
There are some other alternatives like WinVNKey and GoTiengViet
by Trần Kỳ Nam. Earlier, people would used Vietkey in Windows and
Vietres in DOS. In other operating systems there are other software
packages such as xunikey and iBus in Linux.
VNI
is more common in the South because most (if not all) teachers in the
South teach it to their students. Telex is more prevalent in the North
but some Southerners, after learning VNI in schools, try Telex
themselves and choose to switch to it because it makes typing faster,
especially when typing with ten fingers.
In
fact I've seen several Mitsumi keyboards labelled "Vietnamese keyboard
layout" on the box but they were not following this layout.
In
prior versions of Windows Phone, Microsoft also used this layout and
received a lot of criticism since it took so much valuable screen space
and was hard to type with since nobody was accustomed to it. Therefore
they had to create two more keyboard layouts using the common VNI and
Telex typing methods.
A new input method using VNI and Telex for Windows codenamed BlackCi (BLACK Ci)
supported and distributed by Microsoft is also being released in
various technology forums for public experiment. It was intended to be
the official Vietnamese input method to be included in windows 8 but for
some reason they aren't finished yet.
In older times Vietnamese typewriters were actually produced using two different keyboard layouts. One of them is like this:
The other layout is very different than the QWERTY. I tried hard but cannot find it.
I
was fortunate to have the luck of learning how to use typewriters and I
wonder why one of those layouts isn't the official layout for
Vietnamese keyboards. It would make typing Vietnamese faster. I don't
know who invented the current Vietnamese keyboard layout used in
computer OSes mentioned in the beginning of this answer but it's really
silly and ridiculous while VNI and Telex make some characters three
strokes to type and that's undesirable.
EDIT:
I think I have found the other Vietnamese keyboard layout for typewriters:
I think I have found the other Vietnamese keyboard layout for typewriters:
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