Chinese in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

What's New

In addition to English-language Help for the Chinese input methods, there are four important upgrades that affect Chinese support in OS X 10.5:

In Spotlight, "a new Chinese tokenizer intelligently parses the search characters to factor in their relationship and meaning with one another, ensuring the most relevant results."
There are improvements in the underlying support for Windows TrueType fonts and collections. Fonts that set off alarms in Tiger usually do not do so in Leopard. This includes the comprehensive simsun.ttc/simsunb.ttf and mingliu.ttc/mingliub.ttf Windows Vista Chinese fonts, which contain the many thousands of rare Chinese glyphs that are in Unicode but still missing in Mac OS X.
Plug-in input methods are easier to install and more functional than ever before. You simply create a plain-text source file, change the file extension to either ".inputplugin" (for the Apple format) or ".cin" (a common open-source format), and then place it in the /Library/Input Methods folder or your Home ~/Library/Input Methods folder.
Last, but not least, there are two new Traditional Chinese input modes, Pinyin and Zhuyin. They now support direct word/phrase input, unlike the old TCIM input modes with the same names and icons. See below for more information.

Under the Language tab in System Preferences... International, you will find a list of languages supported by OS X 10.5. If Chinese is not installed, you can add it by running the "Optional Installs" package on the DVD and choosing the Traditional Chinese and/or Simplified Chinese "Language Translations" in the Installation Type panel. The language at the top of the list is the default system language, used by the Finder and applications whenever possible.

Note: Adjustments to this list affect the default font behavior in applications that use Apple's built-in text engine, like Mail, Safari, and iWork. Unless you are running the system (i.e., the Finder) in an East Asian language, we recommend the following order: Simplified Chinese (简体中文), Traditional Chinese (繁體中文), Japanese (日本語), Korean Hangul (한글).

The "Order for sorted lists" pop-up menu has seven choices that affect Chinese:

Standard ~ Sorts by radical, then strokes.
Standard (unihan) ~ Sorts all three Unicode CJK Unified Ideographs (CJKUI) blocks together by radical, then strokes.
Chinese ~ Sorts by pronunciation, in Hanyu Pinyin romanization.
Chinese (Pinyin Order) ~ Same as above.
Chinese (Simplified Chinese (GB2312)) ~ Sorts by GB code.
Chinese (Stroke Order) ~ Sorts by strokes, then radical.
Chinese (Traditional Chinese (Big5)) ~ Sorts by Big Five code.

Note: With the exception of "Standard (unihan)", all of the above only sort the CJKUI block. Extensions A and B follow, each always sorted by radical, then strokes.

To see if an application can be localized for Chinese (i.e., run with menus and dialogs in Chinese), select its icon in the Finder and choose Get Info from the File menu. See the Languages section of the window that opens. Apple uses "zh_CN" for Simplified Chinese and "zh_TW" for Traditional Chinese. To localize an application for Chinese, simply uncheck all languages listed above Chinese in the Language tab (see above).

Troubleshooting:

You may need to use the File Name Encoding Repair utility to see Chinese file and folder names created in OS 9 and earlier.

Fonts

Six kinds of Chinese-capable fonts are installed in Leopard:

Five GB 18030 fonts:
- In the /System/Library/Fonts folder: 华文黑体 ST Hei Regular (STHeiti) and 华文细黑 ST Hei Light (STXihei).
- In the /Library/Fonts folder: 华文楷体 ST Kai Regular (STKaiti), 华文宋体 ST Song Regular (STSong), and 华文仿宋 ST Fangsong Regular (STFangsong).
Two GB 2312 fonts:
- In the /Library/Fonts folder: Hei and Kai.
Two Big-5E plus HKSCS-2001 fonts:
- In the /System/Library/Fonts folder: LiHei 儷黑 Pro.
- In the /Library/Fonts folder: LiSong 儷宋 Pro.
Three standard Big Five fonts:
- In the /Library/Fonts folder: Apple LiGothic, Apple LiSung, and BiauKai.
Arial Unicode MS is installed in the /Library/Fonts folder. Includes the Unicode CJK Unified Ideographs block.
A GB 18030 bitmap font is installed in the /Library/Fonts folder.

If your OS X installation is missing any Chinese fonts, you can add them by running the "Optional Installs" package on the DVD and choosing "Additional Fonts" in the Installation Type panel.

Getting Started

Input Menu

Under the Input Menu tab in System Preferences... International, you will find check boxes that activate the components of the Chinese input methods and causes them to appear in the Input menu. Make sure that the "Show input menu in menu bar" box is also checked. You can also check the Character Palette box to make it appear, and so on:

"Keyboard Shortcuts..." leads to the Keyboard Shortcuts tab in System Preferences... Keyboard & Mouse, you will find two keyboard shortcuts listed under the "Input Menu" heading:

Command-space [⌘Space] ~ Selects the previous input source. Toggles back and forth between the last two input sources selected in the Input menu.
Option-command-space [⌥⌘Space] ~ Selects the next input source. Cycles through the keyboards and input methods in the Input menu.

The Chinese input methods and plug-ins you choose will appear right away in the Input menu itself, which appears on the right side of the Menu bar:

To activate a keyboard or input method, choose it from the menu. Its icon will appear in the Menu bar and it will have a check mark beside it in the menu. In the above example, the U.S. keyboard is followed by two Japanese input modes and then ITABC, the built-in Simplified Chinese Pinyin input method. Two Traditional Chinese input methods, Zhuyin and Pinyin, are next, and then QIM (the most advanced Pinyin input method available for Mac OS X). The last item in the first section is Biaoyin, a plug-in input method for typing Chinese romanizations.

Help

One new feature in OS X 10.5 is the built-in Chinese input methods include a full set of English-language help instructions. To access this Help, select an input mode in the Input menu. Its extended menu will appear, with Help at the bottom.

In ITABC, for example, it will look like this:

Input Methods

Note: Apple supplies detailed English-language Help from within the Chinese input methods in OS X 10.5. What follows is a general description of how the input methods have changed, with notes on a few undocumented aspects of their use.

There is a new framework for input methods in Leopard. The SCIM and TCIM components are stored in the /System/Library/Input Methods/ folder, while the phrase and dynamic frequency data for most of the Chinese input methods is located in your home (/Users/) ~/Library/Dictionaries/ folder. You can empty your phrase and/or frequency data by trashing the "...NewPhraseDictionary" and/or "...DynFreqDictionary" files for either input method. Just drag them to the Trash and log out/in.

Traditional Chinese

The revised Pinyin and Zhuyin input modes are tones-optional word/phrase input modes in Leopard. These now share a common set of key sequences with ITABC, making it easier for users to switch between them.

Hanin, meanwhile, remains the same as in Tiger.

Simplified Chinese

ITABC still uses shape numbers instead of tone numbers, and there are changes to its key sequences. Note that the shift-space key sequence discussed in the next section also provides single-character Pinyin＋shapes (optional) input for the entire GB18030 character set.

Structural Pinyin

In both the traditional-Chinese Pinyin and simplified-Chinese ITABC input modes, if you use shift-space (instead of the space bar alone) to call up the Candidate window after typing an input string, you can invoke the Jiegou Pinyin [结构拼音] input mode, which has been translated as "Structural Pinyin." Standard Pinyin readings are used for the graphic and/or phonetic components of the structure of the character, usually left-right, top-bottom, inner-outer. These are given in the Chaibai [拆白] ("components") category of the Information window in ITABC, as shown below.

Note: The Information window does not appear in the traditional-Chinese Pinyin input mode.

For example, the character 魯 breaks down into two common graphic/phonetic components: 魚 yu and 日 ri [it is actually yue 曰, but all component 曰 are read as 日 in this input mode]. If you type "yuri" and press shift-space, you get the following Candidate window:

The purpose of this is to use Pinyin to input obscure characters that one doesn't know how to pronounce. There is a bonus in it for non-native users, since it can also be applied to more common characters!

Character Palette

In Cocoa applications, the Character Palette is always accessible via Edit > Special Characters... There are multiple ways to view Chinese characters. To input characters into text in an application, just double-click on the character you want, or use the "Insert" button:

Simplified Chinese displays the GB 18030 character set. You can look for characters both in the "by Radical" tab (shown below, includes both Simplified and Traditional characters) and the "by Category" tab (Unicode blocks). If you highlight a character and then pause the mouse over it, a little info panel will appear, giving the UTF-16, UTF-8, and GB code points:

Traditional Chinese allows you to look for characters in the "by Radical" tab. If you highlight an indivdual character and then pause the mouse over it, a little info panel will appear, giving the UTF-16, UTF-8, and Big-5E and/or HKSCS-2001 code points:

All Characters displays all of the characters defined in Unicode. Chinese characters are found in the "by Radical" tab.
Code Tables displays Chinese characters in both the "Unicode" tab and the "Other Encodings" tab. Other Encodings provides tables of four Chinese encodings: Big-5E, HKSCS-2001, GB2312, and GB18030.
Glyph displays the complete contents of the selected font.

In the Character Info section (shown above), you will find a list of characters related to the selected character, along with the input key sequences for the Apple input methods. You can drag/copy any character from an application and drop/paste it into the Character Info section to get information about that character.

In the Font Variation section (shown above), you can see all available glyphs for the selected character in the different fonts on the system. In addition, you can choose between "glyph variants" for a single Unicode character. Currently, the only fonts that contain glyph variants are Japanese: the Hiragino fonts and Adobe's Kozuka Pro fonts. Try U+9957, for example. Not all applications support glyph variants.

The pop-up menu in the bottom left of the palette provides access to Font Book via "Manage Fonts..."

If you select a character in a Cocoa application like TextEdit or Pages and then choose "Show Character Selected in Application" in the Character Palette, it will jump to that character.

Last but not least, there is the search window at the bottom right of the palette. Here you can search for Chinese characters using their Hanyu Pinyin readings, in two categories, Simplified Chinese (the GB 18030 character set) Pinyin and Traditional Chinese Pinyin. Double-click on a character in the list of search results to bring it up in the Character Palette.

You can also search for Zhuyin readings, Japanese readings, Korean readings, Unicode character names, code points, and so on.

Email

Mail 3.0 is fully Unicode-savvy and can be localized for Chinese. It automatically sets the encoding of outgoing messages based on content. If your system is set to run in English (in the Language tab of System Preferences... International), or anything other than Chinese or Japanese, the default encoding for outgoing Chinese messages is UTF-8. When the system language is set to Traditional Chinese, the default is Big Five. For Simplified Chinese it is GB 2312. For Japanese it is ISO-2022-JP. You can manually set the encoding of an outgoing message (and subject) in Message > Text Encoding. For example, "Simplified Chinese (EUC)" sets the charset name to GB2312.

Other current e-mail clients available for OS X 10.5 include: Thunderbird, Opera, Entourage, PowerMail , and GyazMail.

Web

Safari 3.0 is Unicode-savvy. Page titles and bookmarks in Chinese are all displayed properly. To reset the encoding of a web page, use Text Encoding in the View menu. The direct Google search window works well with Chinese (also Japanese and Korean). Just enter the Chinese text and Safari does the search correctly.

Other current web browsers available for OS X 10.5 include: Firefox, Camino, Opera, OmniWeb, and iCab.