Revelation and dreams

There is a newspaper called him " HanoSoft Han-Nom software creator ", there is an article for him to " put Han-Nom script on @ " . Many of the lyrics were used to write about him, guy IT knight 2005, teacher Tong Phuoc Khai, author of the exclusive " Made in Vietnam " product in the field, publishing, printing and even storing Hán-Nôm characters.

The story of a young teacher, spent more than five years making an elaborate software just to " launch " . for free. Certainly no less than 2 products of overseas Vietnamese also have similar features to Hanosoft software of Tong Phuoc Khai. However, in terms of features, the bulk, the wonders of the Han-Nom dictionary, Hanosoft is an outstanding product.

HanoSoft: Teacher Khai's true dream

We were present at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Hong Bang University, where Khai was teaching computer graphics and was very fortunate to attend one of Teacher's lectures. A class of about 50 students attentive to the computer screen and manipulated passionately according to the instructions of the young teacher. Also the original graphic drawings, the basic operations but the lesson of Phuoc Khai's young teacher are very attractive to students and proved extremely attractive because " teacher Khai often gives a lot of vivid evidence and teachers and students also play jokes to create a comfortable atmosphere . "

Tong Phuoc Khai teacher confided: " Going to Hong Bang University, I was exposed to Dr. Nguyen Manh Hung's sketches in the publishing room. It is Heli Ugi's sketch collection and there are many words. Nom, in which people write the national culture in the early twentieth century and explain in Nôm.Naturally, I think why it is so difficult and I wonder how to make it apply on the field digital area ".

With his passion for work and research, Khai has been exploring a completely new realm.

The time when Tong Phuoc Khai began to study the creation of the Han-Nom input method in 2000. Young teachers self-taught Chinese characters and then searched the books of Han-Nom dictionary for reading. Self-study, self-tinkering, it took nearly 2 years, not losing, the guy risked knocking on the author's own famous books. Present ideas, persuade researchers to help. And do not know if it is due to the gentle, sincere face, due to Khai's fierce stubbornness, or the punctuality of a person who keeps his promise, the software of typing Chinese-Nom characters was born later. That's a year.

From Han Viet Universal 2 percussion on Song Kieu, Tong Phuoc Khai improved into Hanokey 1.0 keyboard. The keyboard is completely independent using Unicode font standard, can run on Win 9x, Win 2000 and Win XP. The set of Chinese fonts has a number of tens of thousands of words, including Chinese characters of Chinese, Japanese (Kanji), Korean (Hanja) and Vietnamese Nom.

" At first, I made percussion, Han Nom researchers need that percussion to type books, texts, I instruct people how to type and copy CDs. When used, they also I like to use and feel this is good, "Phuoc Khai said.

For now, when Hanosoft 2.0 version, the software suite integrates font transfer features: Chinese-Vietnamese, Vietnamese-Chinese dictionaries and online Chinese-Vietnamese dictionaries have been created, both in a few MB sizes, very neat. Light, easy to install and easy to use, Mr. Khai became a young friend of famous Han Nom researchers like Tran Van Chanh, Cao Tu Thanh .

From the perspective of a professional Han-Nom researcher, Han-Nom researcher Cao Tu Thanh said that the software was inadequate in terms of words, and Han-Nom was introduced, but it was due to the limitations of Han- Nom of the author. He highly appreciated this software: " Hanoshop software is very convenient for people who are professional and non-professional Han Nom users. I think this is a very good lookup tool, at least it is much more profitable. with a real degree ".

The success of the product that sealed Tong Phuoc Khai himself did not even think.

Khai's free shared Han-Nom software product not only supports the design of Photoshop and Corel art to create packaging designs, wedding cards, business cards. The jobs that Khai's students tell us, " Because there are not many people who specialize in Chinese language design, they have to use the service to do it. They beat them according to the character, 3 words 10,000. Usually 1 word is also calculated 5000 - 7,000 Price is also fluctuating transiently, it is not known what the price is but it is generally expensive ".

HanoSoft is also the lifesaver for researchers, making Han-Nom books and making it easier for people to look up Han-Nom documents, which were too difficult.

Mr. Tran Manh Tuan, Deputy Dean of Editorial Department of Science and Technology at Hong Bang University said: "Mr. Khai's Han Nom software allows us to read and understand all the letters we discovered. For example, the work of Mr. Heli Ugi, the French who studied Vietnamese fine arts, his work completely explained in Hán-Nôm characters, thanks to Mr. Khai, we understand that they want to talk about what What is it about Vietnamese folklore? "

Make software from passion and a knight spirit

When Khai's software was published, many newspapers reported and afterwards, the number of letters, emails sent to congratulate, asked how to use and asked so much that Khai could not remember. Mr. Khai is happy that his software has users, even if there are many users.

HanoSoft became " famous " but few people knew, after hours of class, overtime, more . its author, Tong Phuoc Khai returned to a small attic deep in an alley in the middle of the capital. noisy market. The small attic in the house he rented thanks to his grandmother's house. The poor attic and the lack of a woman's hand were the night where Khai's teacher worked with software upgrading and user support.

Leaving Ben Tre's homeland from the 11th grade, he was a pupil of the land of Tong Phuoc Khai, who was alone with a towel wrapped in Saigon to study. Then, he brushed himself with all the jobs until he graduated from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology . Born in 1974, this year is also at the age of "three children ", but Khai still only have white hands.

Phuoc Khai confided: " I think Han-Nom is the need of cultural researchers. Really those who love culture and research on Han Nom really want to know the origin of national culture and purpose. Therefore, HanoSoft software must be disseminated free of charge for market economy . "

With that very natural way of thinking, Khai has done extraordinary things that are also very natural. For young people, explain for non-profit jobs that are " defined " as passion. " I love Vietnamese. I think that in order to preserve Vietnamese cultural identity, we must first learn Vietnamese from the origin. -It is the word Nom in the past and I want to be able to use Hán-Nôm with computer software ". For Khai, solving difficulties from the problem of Han-Nom is similar to the feeling of desire to overcome an obstacle in life.

That desire is still urging Khai to create a larger, more community-based software, and in particular, it is opening a new perspective that benefits a culture: Han's heritage -Nom will be digitized and downloaded and used for free on the Internet!

" In the short term, Han-Nom Cao Tu Thanh researcher is about to produce a Vietnamese dictionary with Nôm characters and free Chinese characters. I have asked to cooperate with him, help him with programming. And also In the near future, the American Association of Nom Horison also wants to make an online dictionary from Father Quy's book to read Nôm which was released a year, I will be in charge of programming this free dictionary " , Khai revealed.

" Tong Phuoc Khai is a researcher who does not stop ", that is the remark of Mr. Tran Manh Tuan, Hong Bang University. Passion for IT, passion for understanding national culture and "innate" knight spirit always motivates him to do more for the community. Khai can fully enrich what he has done, but he is willing to choose the loss to devote to the community. For us, those who followed him all the way: to school, to visit researchers . and finally have to work very hard to be reluctant to lead him to his poor attic, so happy , so happy to be shared with people like the teacher Tong Phuoc Khai. And happier to know that IT is a means of erasing gaps, bringing opportunities to everyone.