chinese with macosx - want to switch

[babilen]

As this is my first Post, i'd like to say Hello to everyone around! I've been reading this Forums in the last Months and am now convinced, that switching to the Mac platform is the right decision for me.

I study Computational Linguistics and Chinese and need a System which gives me a good development platform and the possibility to handle chinese in a decent way. i always thought that these two were mutual exclusive but it seems to me that macosx is pretty much capable of that, were i find a nice *nix System matched with everything i miss with linux right now. I had a hard time to find Information about Chinese IME's and such with MacOSX and after reading some posts it seems to me, that i might need a Chinese localised Version of OSX, is that true? And do i have to install Software such as PanAlex to have a good IME? I am using Linux right now, and entering/handling Chinese is way too complicated....!

This question is crucial to me, because i won't buy a System which is not able to handle Chinese and i will have to buy me a Wintel Notebook and have Windows and Linux running on it to fit my needs.......

 

[Alte22a]

Hi welcome to macrumors. Hmmm I'm not so sure of Chinese but I have friends running OSX in Japanese. I see that a local version of Chinese OSX is on the install disc. Being a BBC (British Born Chinese) I know that you can read and write emails under word in Japanese and chinese. Not sure if this answers your question but hopes this helps.

 

[redAPPLE]

well, you could contact Apple and ask them, right?

that would be the fastest way to get an answer.

 

[amnesiac1984]

From the Mac OS X website

International Affair
Mac OS X v10.2 comes with full Unicode support and thousands of dollars worth of high-quality fonts — including Japanese and Chinese — and supports non-Roman alphabets (like Arabic, Thai and Hebrew) via improved input and a new Unicode Character Palette.

 

[bousozoku]

In System Preferences, International, you may edit the language choices and select either Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese or both. If you move either to the top and logout/login, you'll find that you have a localised version of Mac OS X for the language you selected.

I don't know how efficient the Input Method for either Chinese is; however, the input method for Japanese has been used for quite a while on various machines and works well. I would imagine the Input Method for Simplified Chinese is pretty efficient since all of it is fairly new in the world.

 

[xjohn]

I use Chinese on OSX without any problems.

As others have said, you don't need a localized version--you can just switch the language settings.

Input methods for both traditional and simplified work no matter what your system language setting is.

You don't need to buy PanALEX, though you might want to follow its development to see if it eclipses the input method offerings of Apple.

For a lot more information, check out the very helpful Chinese Mac site.

 

[Fukui]

Re: chinese with macosx - want to switch

Originally posted by babilen

This question is crucial to me, because i won't buy a System which is not able to handle Chinese and i will have to buy me a Wintel Notebook and have Windows and Linux running on it to fit my needs.......

If you can get to an apple store, ask them to show you how to change the system preferences for languages and IME. Pretty easy. If you change the system preferences for system language all you need to do is restart the programs you want, though a logout and login will change everything. CJK IME is built in to the OS X system, and so are the language files for many programs from apple. Even safari has links to chinese newspapers when in Chinese mode.

 

[redAPPLE]

just out of curiosity, is the government controlling which software and which hardware one uses?

 

[crenz]

Using Chinese characters in Unicode-aware apps on Mac OS X is no problem at all. The functionality is part of any version of Mac OS X.

I set up German and Chinese as languages for my system. All it takes is pressing Cmd-Space (or selecting Chinese from the language menu) to insert a few characters, then Cmd-Space to switch back. I use pinyin for input, but other methods are available.

You can also set the system language to any language you want.

I suggest you go to an Apple Store to try out whether you like the IMEs. The only drawback is that the IME documentation is in Chinese only and my Chinese is not powerful enough to understand it, so I had to go through trial-and-error .