Writing Traditional characters on a Mac?

[Nina]

Does anyone at this forum use a Mac computer?

I have an emac OS X10.2.8. By using Safari for a browser, I can cut and paste Traditional characters between sites on the internet. By using Sherlock, I can translate from English into Chinese and vice-versa.

But I can't seem to type or paste Chinese characters into Appleworks. There are fonts for Chinese in Appleworks, but they don't recognize pinyin spellings or anything else I have tried.

Is there a way to write a document with both English and Chinese characters on my mac? Is there an encoder or input software I should download?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

-Nina

[dfm]

Yes, the ability to enter Chinese charaters is built into Mac OS X, but you have to turn it on. I've already updated to 10.3 and the exact layout of the international system preference is different, but if you follow these steps, you should be able to figure it out.

Open the System Preferences under the apple menu.

In the top line of "Personal" preferences you will see an icon labeled "International". Click on this.

Under the "Language" entry, make sure that Chinese is visible in the list of languages (it will be labeled by the characters for fanti zhongwen). If it is not in the list, then click on edit to add it).

Under the entry for input menu (or possiblly Keyboards for 10.2). Click on the check box for "traditional chinese". And if it is present, click on the item that says "show input menu in menu bar"

Close the preferences.

After you do this, you will see a U.S. Flag in the upper right menu bar. If you examine that menu you will see the entries for U.S., Traditional Chinese and whatever else you have selected. When the Traditional Chinese input method is selected, you will also see a set of additional options to set various preferences and what type of input method (pinyin, zhuyinfuhao, etc) you wish to use. I believe the default is pinyin.

When you are in Appleworks, you select the Traditional Chinese input method from the input method menu (alternatively, you can type 'apple-space' to step through the choices), select the font you want, then start typing. You can change languages character by character in your document.

For the pinyin method, you enter text character by character. When you type wo3 for example, a small window will pop-up with 'w', and then after you type the number for the tone mark, this small window will switch to characters. Each character has a number next to it, and if there are more characters than fit into the pop-up window, you will see a pair of up/down arrows on one end. If the first character is the one you want, hit return. Otherwise type the nunber of the character. If you need to scroll, use the arrow keys.

Ok, hope that helps.

David

[Nina]

Hi David-

It took me a minute to find where on this forum you had responded to my original post. Thanks for transfering it here, and thanks for the incredible response. I could actually follow what you were saying (I don't usually understand the technical computerese), and now I know how to use the application under "the flag". I can't thank you enough, and it was so easy to follow your directions. Maybe you should write manuals for Apple Help!

Since you've been so helpful, I'll ask another question. Is there a way to type in pin-yin words with the tone marks (rather than adding the numbers at the end of the words)?

Big Thanks-

Nina

[dfm]

Thank you Nina, you are very kind.

Funny you should ask about pinyin. I happen to be looking into that right now. Unfortunately, I have not yet found a solution for OS X. There is a great solution for OS 9 (probably works on 8 and 7 too). It's called Rich's PinYin and if you do a google search you are sure to find it. He provides a couple of fonts and a keyboard that goes under 'the flag'. By typing, say, option-1 (or option-2 or option-3 or option-4) before typing a vowel, you would get the appropriately marked character. But alas he's not supporting it any more and so no OS X version is forth coming :-(

I did sumble across a font that replaced certain characters on the keyboard with a combination vowel-tone mark (I think '1' got you e, first tone, for example). But I didn't like that approach so I didn't write down where I got it from.

If I find a solution, I'll post it.

David

[Nina]

Hi David-

A kind person at another forum offered up these links for free downloads of fonts that are supposed to enable us to type in pin-yin tones:

EasyTone

http://www.foolsworkshop.com/easytone/

Zev's TimesPinyin

http://www.namkung.com/zev/TimesPinyin.html

I haven't had a chance to check them out yet, but do let me know if you have luck with them.

-Nina