User's Guide
for
IPA Palette v2.0
/ʔa͜ɪ.pʰi'ɛ͜ɪ.pʰə'lɛʔ/
Brian S. "Moses" Hall
In a Nutshell
IPA Palette is a Unicode input method for the Mac. It allows users of OS X 10.2.8 and later to insert International Phonetic Alphabet symbols in a Unicode-enabled text field or editor (i.e., any OS X application worth using).How to Install
There are two distinct "flavors" of IPA Palette.For OS X 10.5 and later
The "new style" Input Method Kit (IMKit) is available and is preferred, since IMKit is much simpler and cleaner for me, the programmer, and probably you, the user. IMKit compatibility is a new feature of IPA Palette 2.0. Use the supplied installer and you will get the IMKit flavor installed with little trouble. It seems that there is no need to restart the machine or log out; the installer tries to notify Mac OS that a new Input Method has been added. You should therefore be able to use it immediately.For OS X 10.2.8 - 10.4
The software is built to work with the Component Manager. This is the older and somewhat messier way that Input Methods had to be built. Because of limitations in Apple's installer software, you must install manually if you use this flavor. You may choose to install in either /Library/Components or ~/Library/Components. The former will make IPA Palette available to all users but will require administrator privileges. The latter will install just for your own use. Create the selected Components directory if it does not exist, and drag the IPAPalette.component file into it. You will need to restart your Mac before IPA Palette can be enabled and used.Note: any time you upgrade from an older version of IPA Palette to a newer, a logout or restart is recommended. That's because an older version of the server (GUI) process may still be running. Alternatively, you can try using the Terminal command killall IPAServer, but I still recommend a restart especially on pre-Tiger systems.
How to Enable
Go to System Preferences → International → Input Menu. IPA Palette should show up near the top of the list of input methods, allong with the built-in Character Palette, as in Figure 1. Put a check mark in the box to enable it, and also make sure the check box at the bottom of the window ("Show input menu in menu bar") is checked also. This enables the Input Menu, which I sometimes refer to as the "flag menu".
Figure 1: IPA Palette enabled under Mac OS X 10.5
How To Use
Select the Input Menu item "Show IPA Palette" (Figure 2). You should be greeted by a view similar to Figure 3.
 Figure 2: The Input Menu under Mac OS X 10.5 with IPA Palette ready to go |
 Figure 3: IPA Palette activated under Mac OS X 10.5 |
To enter text, you click on the desired IPA symbol. The preview pane on the right side of the palette shows a magnified image of the character the mouse is over. You can select the preview font you want to see using the popup menu button above it.
Note: the font selection on the palette has no direct influence on the font selection in your document. You can insert a character in the preview font by control-clicking it, but that only applies to the character that is inserted, not to the font selected in the System font panel.
Alternation: Superscripts and Above/Below
Standard IPA superscripts (such as ʰ and ʷ), and superscript versions of other IPA symbols (like ᵊ and ᶿ, when provided by a good font) do not have separate buttons. Instead, you hold down the shift or option key (or both) with the button for the full-sized version of the symbol. Similarly, certain diacritics can alternate between "above" and "below" versions, for example the under-ring that indicates voicelessness (n̥). You can also put the ring above, in the case of a carrier with a descender (ŋ̊).To preview one of these alternate versions, hold down either the shift or option key when the cursor is over a symbol. If Unicode supports an alternate form, the preview will change. To insert the alternate, hold the shift or option key as you click on the symbol.
Example: to insert aspiration /ʰ/, find the voiceless glottal fricative /h/ in the Consonants tab, hold down the shift and/or option keys, and click the symbol.
Note: currently this does not work with the list of results in the search tab, but you can search for the string "aspirated" to find it.
User-Defined Symbols
If IPA Palette tried to show all of the symbols used in theoretical and applied linguistics, the window would have twenty tabs and fill the entire screen! It's a painful choice, but only current IPA/ExtIPA symbols (and their superscripts if available) will be officially supported. However, if you need some additional symbols that are not in IPA but are still supported by Unicode, you can add them to your preferences. Or maybe you just use a few IPA symbols and you want them all on the same tab.The
Settings pane has a button called Custom Symbols….
If you press the button, a sheet will be displayed in which you can edit your custom symbols.
You can add (with the plus button) and delete (with the delete key). You can paste in a symbol, or you can use Apple's
Character Palette to enter one. Under the Description column you can describe the symbol if
you wish. If you do, the description will be displayed at the bottom of the palette when you mouse
over the symbol, and you can search for it in the Search tab.
The
Custom tab pane is updated every time you edit your list. (If you remove all of them, or don't have any,
the Custom pane will not be displayed in the Palette.) Custom symbols and their descriptions
are saved in your preferences, so you only have to define them once.
Note: if a glyph is a diacritic, IPA Palette will (should -- there may be some nonspacing characters it does not know about -- let me know if there is one it misses) add the normal dotted circle (
U+25CC) as
a placeholder in the table and the image map. You don't need to (and should not) add it manually.
Font Support
Although OS X has always had decent IPA support, I am assuming that most IPA Palette users will want something better than decent. I recommend Doulos SIL or Charis SIL, both high-quality free fonts from SIL International. They are the de facto standard IPA fonts, and I have designed IPA Palette with them in mind. The SIL font designers have made Doulos/Charis "smart" using OpenType and AAT (Apple Advanced Typography) properties. Take as an example the IPA tone symbols U+02E5 through U+02E9. While fonts in the Hiragino family can render them, Doulos can form elegant ligatures, as in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Comparison of Hiragino and Doulos, contrasting Doulos' ligature with Hiragino's lack thereof, for the same tone sequence.
Font "Synchronization"
To insert a symbol in the current open document in the font that you have selected for the font preview, hold down the Control key when you click on it.Note: anything you type subsequently will be in the font that was selected before. Only the inserted symbol will be in the preview font.
User-Defined Fonts
IPA Palette tries to show only IPA fonts in its popup menu. To be specific, it searches every installed font for those which contain /ɮ/, LATIN SMALL LETTER LEZH. 1 If you want the menu to show additional fonts, you can do so, but you must modify your preferences using the Terminal or with Property List Editor (part of Apple's free Developer Tools). (Note: most users will not need or wish to do this.)
defaults write com.blugs.IPAServer UserFonts '("Arial Narrow","Papyrus")'
The font names are a combination of "Family" (like "Hiragino Maru Gothic"), and
"Typeface" (like "Regular", "W4", or "Bold"). You can omit "Regular", as in the example
above for the Papyrus typeface.
You can find these names using Font Book or the standard font panel.
How to Report Bugs or Feature Requests
moses@blugs.com (that's me)If you have a crash, try to send a CrashReporter log with your report. Also, try to turn on "Debugging" via the "About" pane of the IPA Palette window itself; a higher debug level sends more status message to the System logger. You can monitor this using /Applications/Utilities/Console while IPA Palette is running. It's not perfect, but it may give us some clues about what has happened.
Please try to be as complete as possible in your description. "IPA Palette doesn't work on my computer" is a waste of my time and yours.
FAQ and Potential FAQ Section
Q: Can I use the palette in Microsoft Office?
A: Maybe.
- Old versions (Office X and earler) do not speak Unicode at all. Forget it.
- In Word 2004, diacritics are not positioned correctly. Microsoft engineer: "Die a critic? Huh??"
- Word 2008 actually seems to almost work sometimes! Wow guys, it only took you 8 years?
Q: Does IPA Palette work with Application XYZ?
A: Maybe.
- In general, if the software works with Character Palette, it will almost certainly work with IPA Palette.
- It depends on how well application XYZ supports Unicode. Carbon (C-language programs that may or may not work with Mac OS 9) software, especially software written with legacy QuickDraw text APIs, is particularly vulnerable to this kind of incompatibility, as the old Mac Toolbox was written way back in the Late Mesozoic period before Unicode.
- Cocoa (Objective-C programs that require OS X) software is automatically Unicode-savvy, so no worries there. I would be shocked to find a Cocoa application that causes problems for IPA Palette.
- OpenOffice and other X11 software, Java programs, and any other miscellaneous categories may perform arbitrarily well or poorly, depending on the implementation language and the phase of the moon.
Q: My Linguistics class is over. How do I uninstall the Palette?
A: Manually.
- The IMKit version is in /Library/Input Methods or ~/Library/Input Methods, depending on how you installed it.
- If you use the Component Manager version, it lives wherever you dragged it, either in /Library/Components or ~/Library/Components.
- In either case, just drag the software to the Trash. The next time you restart, the software will be completely inactivated, and then you can empty the Trash.
Thanks to...
- Evan Gross from Rainmaker Research for help with fun NSApplication undocumented calls for the search pane
- Hans-Jörg Bibiko for the German localization
- David Swain for help in debugging the cmap type 2 crasher
- Joanne Scheibman for help debugging under Rosetta/Word
- Maxim Makatchev for corrections to the Russian localization
- Many, many other kind folks who have offered suggestions and advice
To Do...
- Darker Input Menu icon that looks better on Snow Leopard.