Dear Simon,
You're very welcome, and in fact you are correct that there is no
WORKING shortcut key to change keyboard layouts under Leopard with
the default setup. This topic became very confused because it was
not initially apparent that there was a difference between the Tiger
and Leopard options for the earlier set of instructions.
The shortcut keys work for me as follows:
If I have 4 keyboard input languages (ordered as A, B, C, and D on
the Text Input menu of the menu bar, with A as my default language ),
then from an application window holding down the Option key and
tapping the space bar cycles me from A, to B, to C, to D, to A, and
so forth. If I want to get back to language A from any of these I
press Option-Shift-Space. However, if I stopped at language C (for
example), and then hold down the option key again and tapping the
space bar to cycle from C to D, to A, to B, to C, to D, etc. and stop
at B before I release the option key, then C is now my "previous
input" and Option-Shift-Space takes me back to C.
Holding down option and tapping space always cycles through all your
input menu options. Holding down option+shift and tapping space
cycles between only 2 input options (previous and current).
VoiceOver doesn't announce these changes, so the way I check this is
by typing something in TextEdit. Of course, it's much easier if you
only have two input menu language keyboard options!
HTH
Cheers,
Esther
On Aug 18, 2008, at 5:13 AM, Simon Cavendish wrote:
Dear Esther and Will,
I'd like to apologise to both of you for sending an inaccurate
information regarding the existence of shortcut key that enable one
to change keyboard layouts under Leopard. I must have banished that
info from my mind as I had had some previous communication on the
subject with Esther but had found changing the conflicting shortcut
key difficult and abandoned the attempt at that time. That was a
clear example of repression.
Esther, thank you for the clear step-by-step instructions again.
With best wishes
Simon
On 18 Aug 2008, at 03:24, Esther wrote:
Hi,
Will wrote:
Hi is there a mac os x leopard hotkey for changing language, as
every so often my language for the keyboard keeps changing
without me going to the status menu and choosing british or
French so am wondering if anyone else has noted this behavior
and Simon replied:
Will, I hven't noticed it. It is not good if it should be
happening. There's no hot key to change keyboard language layout
although it would be very useful.
Will, open System Preferences and go to the Keyboard & Mouse
menu. In the Keyboard Shortcuts pane, interact with the outline
and take a look at the shortcuts assigned under the "Input Menu"
items to "Select the previous input source" and to "Select the
next source in the Input menu", then VO-keys+down arrow to view
the shortcuts assigned under "Spotlight" to "Show Spotlight search
field" and "Show Spotlight window". These had the same shortcut
key assignments on my system (Tiger) until I changed the "Input
Menu" assignment for "Select previous input source" to Option-
Shift-Space and for "Select next input source in the Input menu"
to Option-Space.
1. Navigate to System Preferences (VO-keys+M for the menu bar;
arrow down; type "S Y" for "System Preferences" and press return)
2. Navigate to the Keyboard & Mouse menu (type "K E" and return;
VO-keys+Space to open menu)
3. Navigate to "Keyboard Shortcuts" (VO-keys+Right Arrow to
"Keyboard Shortcuts" and VO-keys+Space to select the tab)
4. Navigate to the Outline (VO-keys+Right Arrow) and interact (VO-
keys-Shift-Down arrow).
5. The Input Menu options are near the end of the list, so you can
use VO-keys-Fn-Shift-Right Arrow (VO-keys-Shift-End on a desktop)
to move to end of the list (scrolling, if needed), and either VO-
left to the descriptions column and VO-up to these entries, or
else use VO-keys+I to bring up item chooser menu, type "I N P" to
select "Input Menu" and return.
6. VO-down to read descriptions of the Input Menu options and VO-
right for the shortcut assignments. The Spotlight shortcut
options are just a few lines below the Input Menu options.
7. To change a shortcut assignment, double-click the shortcut and
press the new shortcut keys:
7a. From the shortcut key field route mouse cursor to VoiceOver
Cursor with VO-keys-Command-F5 (or VO-keys-Command-Fn-F5 on older
laptops) if you don't have your VoiceOver navigation set with
"Mouse cursor tracks VoiceOver cursor"
7b. Double-click with VO-keys-Shift-Space by holding down the
Control, Option, and Shift keys while tapping the Space bar twice
quickly. (Leopard users with full-size keyboards and Numpad
Controller turned on can double-click by pressing the "5" key on
the numeric keypad twice quickly in succession.)
7c. Press the new combination (e.g. Option-Shift-Space for "Select
the previous input source" or Option-Space for "Select the next
input source in the Input menu").
8. Repeat the steps in item #7 for each keyboard shortcut you wish
to re-assign, then stop interacting with the outline (VO-keys-
Shift-Up Arrow)
9. Navigate back to the main "System Preferences" Menu by tabbing
to the "Show All" button and press (VO-keys+Space)
10. Navigate to the "International" menu (type "I N" and return;
press VO-keys+space to open the menu)
11. Navigate to "Input Menu" (VO-keys+Right Arrow to the "Input
Menu" tab and VO-keys-Space to select)
12. Navigate (VO-keys+Right Arrow) past the table of selected
(checked) input keyboards to read a summary of Input Menu
Shortcuts. Your two shortcuts should be listed with their new
assignments:
Select previous input source: Option-Shift-Space
Select next input source in menu: Option-Space
In Tiger, my Input Menu Options are followed by Input Source
Options with radio buttons to select either of the two items listed:
Use one input source in all documents
Allow a different input source for each document
In Leopard, based on information from Simon in an earlier set of
list posts, and confirmed by the following article from the
Multilingual Mac web page, the default is to only use one input
source in all documents, and the list of Input Source Options is
missing:
http://m10lmac.blogspot.com/2007/11/os-x-105-leopard-fix-for-
missing-input.html
(OS X 10.5 Leopard: Fix for Missing Input Menu Item)
This means you can change your input keyboard language, but the
shortcut uses the same changed keyboard for all documents, so you
can't open a second TextEdit window in Leopard and set this to a
French keyboard using the shortcut while your first window is set
to an English keyboard. I think you have to go up to the menu
bar and change the input keyboard language. In Tiger you can just
Option-Space to the language you want in each TextEdit window, and
have a different input keyboard in each one. (You don't hear
VoiceOver announce the change in the Input keyboard language,
though.)
Apparently, before Tiger there was a keyboard shortcut that
allowed you to switch between keyboard languages if you used more
than one -- e.g., if you checked options for a French keyboard or
a German keyboard under the Input tab of the International menu
under System Preferences. The problem is, when Apple introduced
Spotlight in Tiger, they assigned the "Command-Space" shortcut key
that had been used to switch language input keyboard to
Spotlight. As far as I know, the same keyboard shortcuts are
assigned to both selecting the previous and next input sources in
the Input menu (switching input language keyboards), and to
showing the Spotlight search field and Spotlight window in both
Tiger and Leopard. The Spotlight shortcuts probably take
precedence, but I'd bet that's the source of Will's occasional
problems.
Switching to the shortcuts I gave above also allows you to use
shortcut keys to switch the language keyboard for your input.
Remember that keyboard input language only affects how you type
accents, special symbols, and the like (or characters in the case
of non-Latin keyboards for Russian, Greek, Japanese, etc.). It
does not ensure that words you type in a foreign language are
pronounced correctly, or even at all -- that requires using a
voice which will pronounce the words correctly using text-to-
speech for French, German, etc. Changing keyboard input language
also doesn't mean that TextEdit, Mail, etc. will spellcheck using
a French, German, etc. dictionary. For that, you have to launch
an application window with the desired language localization,
e..g, by typing:
/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit -AppleLanguages
'(fr)'
from a Terminal window to start a TextEdit session with a French
localization. This is one of the methods posted a couple of weeks
ago to make an application start in a different language
localization from the default one for the system.
HTH
Cheers,
Esther
