The following article was posted to the international mac users list. As there are a number of comments applicable to Word and Entourage, and I know a number of users here use quite a mix of international features, I thought it might be interesting reading. -- Eric Hildum ------ Forwarded Message From: Tom Gewecke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (Discussion of everything Mac for international/multilingual users.) Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2001 06:59:45 -0700 To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (Discussion of everything Mac for international/multilingual users.) Subject: OS X and Foreign Language Support: Update Here is an update of a piece on OS X foreign language support, taking account of various applications which have become available since the 3/24/01 release. Any corrections or additions welcome. ================================================ These comments are based on OS X 10.0.1 ( build 4L13), incorporating the Apple update of 4/13/01. OS X is a new and complex animal. For the first time, Apple has deployed Unicode on a broad scale in its operating system, which provides the potential for great linguistic flexibility. At the same time, OS X operates in 3 different modes -- Classic, Carbon, and Cocoa -- each of which have different capabilities. The Darwin OS, based on Unix, is also available. So it is difficult to generalize about how applications, languages, and modes work together. Unlike OS 9 and earlier Mac systems, which were produced in localized versions for foreign countries, OS X offers the choice of 7 system languages out of the box -- English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. This will probably expand in the future. These languages, which affect system-wide menus and dialogues, can also be changed, for your next login, via the Languages menu of the International pane (in System Preferences of the Desktop menu). Note that the system language is distinct from the keyboard language, which determines what you can type. OS X switches automatically to OS 9.1, operating in "Classic" mode, whenever you open an application which is only designed for the older systems. In this situation your system language is that of the OS 9.1 which is being used, and you have access to all the language kits that you have installed on it. Whether they all operate as expected I have not been able to test. If you are in OS X proper, using what are called "Cocoa" programs, you can (without any additional installation) select keyboards for English, Danish, Catalan, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese (simplified and traditional), and Japanese. To activate these you go the Desktop menu, then to System Preferences, International, and Keyboard Menu. The various keyboards (except Chinese and Korean) can be used with the OS X text processor called TextEdit, the Stickies screen notes program, the Address Book, and the "compose" mode of the Mail program. They also work in the OmniOutliner 1.2 outlining application. http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnioutliner/ Just as in OS 9, there is a "Flag" menu at the top right where you select the language. When Japanese is selected you will get the "pencil" menu and the other facilities of the Kotoeri input method familiar from OS 9. Note that the Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, Indic, and Central European keyboards, which are available in OS 9 and cover about 14 languages, are absent so far from OS X. Probably they will be added in future updates (most of the necessarly fonts appear to be already present). Also there is currently no "input method" for Korean and Chinese, which means you can read but not write them. For writing all these languages one needs to resort to Classic mode (which is where you will have to be, at least for awhile, with most full-featured word processors in any case). New languages available in OS X, which OS 9 did not have, are Catalan, Vietnamese, and Thai. Unfortunately there seems to be no "help" or other documentation regarding the proper use of these keyboards. If you open a "Carbonized" program, designed to work on both OS 9 and OS X, OS 9 does not launch, and your language menus are those of OS X. But the extent to which you can use them appears limited. In the AppleWorks 6.1 word processor, the BBEdit 6.1 text editor, and the Eudora 5.1 mail program you have access to the European and Japanese keyboards, but not Thai, Vietnamese, or Unicode Hex. The Carbon program Pepper 3.6 does let you use the Unicode Hex facility and (imperfectly) the Vietnamese keyboard, but not the Thai one. If you want to use the carbonized AppleWorks in Classic mode, with all the System 9 language kits available, control-click on the application icon, select Show Package Contents, open Contents and then MacOSClassic, and double-click on AppleWorks6. For reading foreign language web pages, there is a third-party Cocoa web browser OmniWeb available which handles a huge variety of language encodings. You will want to go to the Window menu and down to Customize Toolbar so you can add the character encoding menu to your toolbar -- otherwise it is somewhat cumbersome to get to (hidden in OmniWeb/Preferences/Display). http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omniweb/ When appropriate fonts are installed, OmniWeb can display a large number of languages and scripts, even on the same page. The browser converts all incoming characters to Unicode, and then searches all installed fonts for corresponding glyphs. OS X, unlike OS 9, can make full use of big Windows fonts which contain characters for dozens of languages. The largest easily available font I am aware of is Code2000 with 30,000 characters. If you have access to Arial Unicode MS, this is still larger, with 50,000 characters. The multilingual capabilities of OmniWeb under OS X can be demonstrated by installing these and going to Alan Wood's Unicode Sample Pages. http://home.att.net/~jameskass/CODE2000.ZIP http://www.hclrss.demon.co.uk/unicode/unicode_samples_utf8.html OS X includes the Darwin OS, based on the FreeBSD variety of Unix, which can be accessed via the Terminal program in Applications/Utilities. It does not appear that any multilingual input capabilities are available in the terminal itself or the command-line text editors (Pico, VI, Emacs) provided with Darwin. The Unix X Window GUI can be added to Darwin, and this can be internationalized by modifying various parameter files. --------------------------------------------------------------- Using a Macintosh? Get FREE e-mail and more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com --------------------------------------------------------------- ############################################################# This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to the mailing list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the INDEX mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ------ End of Forwarded Message -- To unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To search the archives: <http://www.mail-archive.com/entourage-talk%40lists.boingo.com/>
