Converting Wylie to Unicode Tibetan Text

Most of us that deal with Tibetan input concerning Unicode use built-in or add-on software keyboard tools to type Wylie and get Unicode Tibetan as output. For example on the Macintosh platform all you need today is to install the Tibetan language keyboard via System Preferences-Keyboard-Input Sources, use the plus button and select the Tibetan Wylie Keyboard. Then via the top level menu (on the Mac) you could switch input languages. Or, in my case I have mapped my mostly unused Caps Lock key to switch between US and Tibetan keyboards.

But there are cases where you have bulk Wylie text and it's just faster to convert a large section via an external web tool. There are many out there today, of which the  THL’s Online Tibetan Transliteration Converter and the TBRC Unicode Tibetan Converter are equally working. In both cases you paste in Wylie into a form and with a converter button you get the Tibetan in another form for selection and pasting. Both use UTF-8 as output, which is good -- it's best to avoid UTF-16 based Tibetan as the industry has very much moved to UTF-8 as de facto Unicode standard.

You might also need to learn the Extended Wylie format for typing Sanskrit mantras and other constructs that require Sanskrit forms of Tibetan letters. 

Even if we fortunately today have real Tibetan letters available on computer and mobile platforms, it's good to learn Wylie. Wylie is still used in academical papers and it seems that will not be phased out. Many dictionary tools accept both Wylie and Unicode Tibetan -- it's just faster to type Wylie without the need to switch to another keyboard. Also, there are still many online dictionaries in Wylie only format.

If you use Wylie in web pages, it's important to flag it as Wylie so some readers will not assume it is the phonetic form of the Tibetan letters, such as in this rigpawiki example.