CALPER's L*Wiki : MacOSX

Outlined are the basic steps to setting up the MacOSX OS for multilingual computing. Additional OS specific pages are available (Windows95or98orME, Windows2000, WindowsXP, MacOS9, MacOSX).

Content on this page graciously provided by Elizabeth Pyatt of The Pennsylvania State University's Teaching and Learning with Technology

, a unit of Information Technology Services. Visit TLT's Computing with Accents, Symbols and Foreign Scripts

.

Macintosh System O S X comes with various utilities, but you need to activate them before they can be used. Unlike System 9, you no longer need to install separate Language Kits. Note that installing O S X upgrades from Apple will allow you to be updated on new.

Note: System O S X 10.2 is code named "Jaguar" and O S X 10.3 is code named "Panther".

This Page

1. Available Keyboards & Applications
2. Activate Keyboards
3. Switch Keyboards
4. View Keyboard Layouts
5. Unicode Hex Input
6. Unicode Character Palette
7. Extended Keyboard Accents Section

Available Keyboards and Applications

The following keyboards are available from O S X

Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Devanagari, Gujarati, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Hungarian, Icelandic, Hawaiian, most Western and Central European languages

The following have been added in O S X 10.3 (Panther)

Armenian, Cherokee, Cree, Pashto, Persian, extended Unicode keyboards for Finnish, Faeroese, Irish, Welsh, Serbo-Croatian, and others.

Software Compatibility

Macintosh keyboards are divided into newer Unicode varieties and older types labeled by their script such as Roman, Cyrillic, Central European, Japanese and so on. Many applications such as Microsoft Word support the older keyboards but cannot access the newer Unicode Keyboards.

These applications support Unicode keyboards

Netscape Composer
Netscape E-Mail
Dreamweaver (Text Import Only)
Text Edit (Free from Apple)
Microsoft Office 2004
File Maker Pro 7
Adobe InDesign CS, Illustrator CS, Photoshop CS (must switch to correct font)
Nisus Express (commercial word processor)
Mellel (shareware text editor, must switch to correct font)

Activate Keyboards

To activate different keyboards in O S X, do the following.
NOTE: If you are using foreign language scripts in "Classic" environment software, you may also need to install Language Kits.

1. Go to the Apple menu and open Systems Preferences.

2. Click the International icon on the first row of the Systems Preferences panel.

3. Click the Keyboard Menu (O S X 10.2) or the Input Menu (O S X 10.3) tab and check the keyboards you want activated.

Panther (10.3) International Control Panel

Jaguar (10.2) International Control Panel

4. NOTE: If you do not see the keyboard you need to activate, you may need to install them from an OS X CD or download the most recent version of OS X from Apple

. Make sure the appropriate Localized Files are checked during the installation set-up wizard.

Switch Keyboards

To switch keyboards:

1. Make sure you have activated all the appropriate keyboards following the instructions in the previous section.

2. Open a software application such as a word processor, spread-sheet or any other application in which you need to enter text.

3. On the upper right portion of the screen, click on the American flag icon (http://calper.la.psu.edu/images/wikimages/tltimages/usflag.gif)

Use the dropdown menu to select a script or language.

4. The keyboard will be switched and an appropriate font will be selected within the application. A flag icon corresponding to the keyboard will be displayed on the upper right.

5. To switch back to the U.S. keyboard or to some other keyboard, click on the flag icon on the upper right and select a keyboard from the dropdown menu.

View Keyboard Layouts (Key Caps)

The KeyCaps program is no longer under the Apple menu in O S X. To open the utility and view different keyboard layouts, do the following:

OS X 10.3 (Panther)

View Different Keyboard Layouts

1. Click on the Keyboard menu (American Flag icon) and select Open Keyboard Viewer.

2. If the Keyboard Viewer window appears to flicker, then move it so that it is not overlapping over any other window.

3. To switch keyboard layouts, select an appropriate keyboard from the flag menu on the upper right.

4. To view the characters available under Shift, Option or Shift+Option, press these keys respectively to reveal the layout within KeyCaps.

5. You can preview fonts from the Fonts drop-down menu at the bottom of the keyboard viewer. You should be in the U.S. layout to preview decorative fonts. For foreign script fonts, you may also have to switch keyboards.

Note: Not all fonts may be recognized.

View Different Fonts in Panther

See the O S X Install and Manage Fonts

page at PSU's TLT for more information on System 10.3 (Panther) font utilities.

O S X 10.2 (Jaguar)

1. Click on the icon for main local hard disk.

2. Navigate to the Applications folder, then Utilities, then KeyCaps.

3. Double-click KeyCaps to open the utility.

4. To switch keyboard layouts, select an appropriate keyboard from the flag menu on the upper right.

5. To view the characters available under Shift, Option or Shift+Option, press these keys respectively to reveal the layout within KeyCaps.

6. You can also switch fonts with the Font menu.

Unicode Hex Input

You can use the utility in O S X to generate many Unicode characters by manually inputting the hexadecimal code. Other options include saving word processor files as Unicode or UTF text.

Note: This utility works in supported in only some applications including Dreamweaver MX, Netscape7?/Mozilla and Text Edit.

1. Make sure you have activated the Unicode Hex Input keyboard. See the activate keyboards section for more details.

2. Open an application which supports Unicode Hex Input such as TextEdit. TextEdit is installed with O S X and can be opened from the Dock or the Applications folder.

3. Switch keyboards to the Unicode Hex Input from the flag icon dropdown menu on the upper right. If the Unicode Hex Option is grayed out, then you are in an application which does not support this utility.

4. To input a specific character, hold down the option key, then type in the four-digit hexadecimal Unicode value (e.g. 044D = Cyrillic э). Charts listing Unicode values for different scripts are available at Unicode.org

Unicode Character Palette

The Character Palette can be used to insert characters into applications such as TextEdit?; however not all characters can be inserted into all applications.
Note: The Unicode Character Input Palette is not available in 10.1.

1. Make sure you have activated the Character Palette in the keyboard menu. See the activate keyboards section for more details.

2. Open the TextEdit application from the Dock or the Applications folder.

3. Choose Show Character Palette from the International (flag icon) menu on the upper right.

Note: If the palette appears to flicker in an out, select Hide Character Palette, close or move all open windows and reopen the palette in a clear area.

4. To enter a Unicode character select Unicode or All from the View menu.

5. Click the Unicode Blocks tab, then In the left pane, scroll to a script you wish to preview.

6. If you wish to insert an accented letter or special "dingbat" such as a math symbol or special symbol, then select one of the other View options to see that set of characters.

7. Click the Insert button to insert the character into the TextEdit document.

Panther Character Palette (10.3)

Jaguar Character Palette (10.2)

8. If you are working with Chinese, Korean or Japanese, then switch the View menu to the appropriate language in order to view special East Asian options such as the By Radical view.