Mac IME question

Life Technology
1

I’m not there yet, but I keep thinking about getting a Mac. Why? Just 'cause I’m curious. And bored. And my wife wants us to get one.

Here’s the deal: I’m a Chinese-English translator, so I need to be able to input Chinese into MS Office files. That’s no problem, right? Well, it’s not all that simple for me. You see, I’ve been a devoted, addicted and no-possible-way-going-back user of the Dvorak keyboard for some five years now, and the thing is, I use the Dvorak layout for typing both English and pinyin (with Microsoft Pinyin IME 3.0).

In order to do that I need to perform a simple tweak in the Registry. Specifically, I go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layouts and change the DLL thingy for all of the Chinese keyboard layouts from “kbdus.dll” to “bkddv.dll.” I’m quite proud to say that I more or less figured out how to do that myself, though it took some doing! Now, the standard line about PCs from aficionados is that you can do these kinds of tweaks, whereas, by contrast, Macs don’t let you under the hood because they’re kinda “for dummies.”

Is this true? Wait, nevermind. My question is: would I be able to effect the same result using a Mac? Would I be able to modify the Chinese IME on a Mac so that I could input pinyin using the Dvorak keyboard layout? I raise this question here because I frankly don’t know where else to ask it. I think I’m the only person in the whole wide world web who does this. Any future purchase of a Mac would be premised upon being able to make this modification, so I’d like to know if it’s possible first.

2

Does this satisfy your question?

3

I don’t have a Mac, so I can’t try it out, but I’m not sure. Can it remap different layouts for individual languages? Would anyone with a Mac be willing to do a little experiment as a favour and switch both their English and Chinese pinyin IMEs to the Dvorak layout to see if it works?

4

Well, being super-spazz that I am, I am too hungover to do anything else on a Friday night than try to find out. Interesting Q.

My initial fiddle came up with a ‘no’. You can only ‘check’ one input method at a time, which is really simple to do (apple key, space bar) but makes it impossible to use Dvorak for non-Roman alphabets or scripts which sounds pants to me.

Then I thunk mebbe it’s possible to modify the default keyboard layout so that you don’t have to ‘select’ Dvorak. Download Dvorak Mac layout and add to ‘Library’. Then it could be possible.

Unfortunately, I’m not logging out today because I’ve got Handbrake doing some stuffs 'n it’s slower 'n a snail on sandpaper. I will keep this in the front of my mind and have a crack in a couple 'o days.

5
  1. Pay $20, download QIM.
  2. Go to QIM preferences, change keyboard layout to “Dvorak”.
  3. Type Chinese.

There are other ways, but this is by far the simplest. QIM is the best pinyin input method for OS X (by a country mile) - I am a QWERTY user and I still paid up the cash. It’s no exaggeration to say I can type ten times faster with it than with the standard Apple Pinyin input (a little bit of an unfair comparison because the Apple one is utter shite, but you get the point).

6

Oh golly, Taffy, you are the Mac-master.

I thought about downloading that but I’m too lazy to buy stuff online and also the name made me go all Beavis and Butthead.

7

Buttercup: Thanks for the offer to help. I wonder if Taffy’s response solves the problem, though?

Taffy: So with QIM, you can simply choose the Dvorak layout for your pinyin? That is cool, and far easier than doing it on a PC.

May I ask why QIM is faster than the standard Apple pinyin? I’m not sure I understand. Or do you mean the application itself responds more quickly to the touch so that there’s no delay between keystrokes?

8

Quickcore Input Method, you dirty perv. QIM is an essential part of my daily routine…

Rousseau - QIM has lots of nifty things that the the standard input doesn’t have, to wit:

Non-tonal input － i.e. you don’t have to enter a tone, so you can type shuiping and it will bring up 水平. You can still choose to use tones if you feel like it.

Other supported keyboards - French, German, Dvorak etc.

Fuzzy Pinyin - useful if you don’t know your “z” from “zh”, your “en” from your “eng” or your “f” from your “h” (highly customisable)

Allows abbreviated pinyin and makes (very good) educated guesses about what you want - type hjbj and it will pull up 好久不見.

Learns from user-inputted phrases - for instance the first time you type 陳水扁 it won’t be in the in-built dictionary and you’ll have to select each character. The next time you need it, it will already be saved for you.

Learns from often-used characters - if for example your work means you need to use 沈 more than you do 陳 - the program will move it to the top of the list for you.

No need to confirm characters - you don’t have to choose from a list - just keep typing and only stop to choose a character when it gets it wrong (not too often).

Customisable dictionaries, specialist dictionaries (medical, Buddhist, physics etc.), customisable shortcuts, one-key switch between roman and Chinese input, two-key switch between traditional and simplified output.

There are also tons of options I don’t use, but which I’m sure some people would find useful. All of the things above account for the speed difference in typing between QIM and the standard input (I really wasn’t exaggerating that).

9

By the way, there’s a pretty useful site about all things Chinese Mac related here: groups.google.com/group/chinesemac/ - lots of smart people on there who know a lot about these issues.

10

Further to this, we need to make MS Word documents. Since I’m completely ignorant of anything to do with Mac, what software would I need to be able to produce Word files?

11

In that case, Word would be a good idea. Mac’s got that. You can save documents from other programs in .doc format though.

12

You mean it, er, just comes with it?

13

NO, you have to go and buy/have installed at a local friendly store (not necessarily the same thing) a copy of MS Orifice. the mac version that’s been most comfortable for me to use is still Mac Office 2004 version 11.3.5 or so. DO NOT get the latest release as the Powerpoint in it truly sucks, and is not compatible with older versions.

i don’t believe it has outlook but does have entourage in the pack. so if you’re addicted to outlook you’ll have to change (which is only a blessing, reallly). can’t truly remember as its been some time since I had it installed.

14

I don’t suppose you can import your old emails from Outlook Express into the Mac email program, can you?

15

Yes, you can. If you have a huge inbox in Outlook it might take some time, but it’ll happily sit there in the background churning away until it’s done.