Typing Hebrew on MacOSX

Thanks to Chris Heard on Higgaion who has posted two videos on typing Hebrew on Mac OS X which are designed to:

introduce students to typing in Hebrew on a Macintosh.

Next Mac Microsoft Office due late 2010

Microsoft made an announcement this week about next year's (yeah, right) release.

Microsoft announced Thursday that the next edition of Microsoft Office for Mac will be released in late 2010. The new edition of the venerable office suite will include Outlook for Mac, a new application that will replace the Entourage.

They also announced a reduced pricing scheme, the Home/Student edition and the Business edition. I'm skeptical that they will make the 2010 release date? And if they do, I'm very skeptical they will improve right to left Unicode support.
Followup:
Etherington at TAB has a source that VBA is being reintroduced into Office 2010. I would certainly welcome that, but I think this discussion has made me realize I won't be buying Office '10, just like I haven't purchased Office '08.
You've gotta love Miller at MacWorld who writes:

My first reaction to Microsoft’s Thursday announcement that it will release a new version of its Office suite for the Mac in 2010 can be summed up in one word: Why?

Update: Someone reminded me that my prediction was 2012: Unicode Hebrew Coming to Word 2012!

Update: Microsoft still anticipates the next Office Mac release at the end of 2010. No definitive word yet on right-to-left Unicode languages, but it IS confirmed to include VBA.

Entering Unicode Text and Symbols

If you want to make entering Unicode text a natural part of your workflow on your Mac, whether it be Greek, Hebrew, or special symbols, it is best if you spend a couple minutes preparing your setup. You need to make the "International" preference pane and the Input Menu your friend. In OS X 10.5, you will find the "Input Menu" tab in the "International" system preference pane. Make sure you do six things in this pane:

1. Check "Show input menu in menu bar"
2. Check "Character Palette"
3. Check "Keyboard Viewer"
4. Scroll down and also enable only the few languages that you'll be using, such as "Hebrew - QWERTY" or "Greek Polytonic" or another Unicode keyboard you have installed.
5. Also check the "Unicode Hex Input" keyboard.
6. Finally, either simply note or even customize the two keyboard shortcuts listed that enable you to both toggle between the two most recent input keyboards and to cycle through all unicode keyboards listed in your input menu. For more information on customizing your shortcuts, have a look at this post on Juggling Keyboard Shortcuts.

All this preparation will put the Input Menu in your menu bar that will look something like this:

So, if I'm writing text where I occasionally need to switch to the Greek keyboard, all I do is select Greek from the menu the first time, and from then on out, I use my quick keyboard shortcut to toggle between the two. However, you have other options.

At any point, you can open the "Keyboard Viewer" to have a look at the keyboard layout you currently have selected. But what about the entering of some random letter or symbol in Unicode?

You can open the "Character Palette" from the input menu and search for the glyph. However, if you do a lot of this, then I'd highly recommend getting the great app Unicode Checker.

Also, if you know the Unicode hex number for the letter or symbol, you can switch to the "Unicode Hex Input" keyboard and then hold down the option (⌥) key while you press the numbers/letters for the character. If you're just typing in your default language otherwise, you can keep this specialized keyboard selected. This functionality will be familiar to Windoze users.
For instance, let's say you want to enter that symbol for option. Perhaps you're familiar with my listing of all keyboard symbols here. Then, since you know that the option symbol is hex #2325, with the "Unicode Hex Input" keyboard selected, you hold down the Option key and press "2325" and out pops the "⌥" symbol.

The final thing I'd add is if there are some special symbols you think you'll be wanting to enter with some frequency, you may want to create a text file or snippet so that you can quickly copy and paste them in. I have a text file called Unicode Dingbats Symbols where I collect all Unicode symbols of interest for quick reference. Or, you might use TextExpander or other text replacement utility to change "+command" into "⌘" and "+option" into "⌥" as you type. Or, like me, you may put some frequently used text like this string "⌘⌥⌃⇥␣⎋⇧⇪⏎⌤⌫⌦⌧⇭⏏⌽⇱⇲⇞⇟↑⇡↓⇣←⇠→⇢" on a shelf in Quicksilver that pastes into your document with a keystroke.

Just a few minutes of prep work will have you typing in Unicode with ease. Find the methods that work for you. (You know what they say about obtaining cat skins.)

Juggling Keyboard/Spotlight/Quicksilver ⌃⌥⌘ ␣ key combos

Historically, the key combo shortcut for invoking Spotlight, invoking Quicksilver, and toggling the international Unicode input keyboards are all the same, namely, Command Space (⌘ ␣). To include all three features in my workflow, here's what I've done:

Quicksilver has long used the Control key (⌃) as another standard option, and it also has a double-tap option for invoking. And then, moving the international keyboard input to utilize the Option key (⌥) everything gets cleared up. So, all I need remember is Command key for Spotlight to search the contents of files on my drive, Option key for for toggling back and forth with Greek input, and Control key for Quicksilver and all its magic. It quickly becomes muscle-memory if you use them as frequently as I do.

Here's the full summary:

⌘ ␣	Spotlight invoke
⌥⌘ ␣	Spotlight window invoke
⌥ ␣	Toggle two most recent input keyboard
⌃⌥ ␣	Cycle among input keyboards
⌃ ␣	Quicksilver invoke
⌃⌃	Quicksilver double-tap invoke

(Truth be told, I've set the primary invoke for Quicksilver to ⌃⌘ ␣ but still always use the ⌃⌃ double-tap to invoke. This is because I've kept Word's default ⌃ ␣ as "remove character formatting", which I use a ton.)

Update: In Snow Leopard, you can ignore the "Select next keyboard" command that cycles through them, since now you can hold down the "Select Previous" key combination and get a nice HUD to move around.

Special Key Symbols

This has been an increasingly popular reference page on the Macintosh Biblioblog. Lot's of folks come here looking for the Mac key symbol for the alt key or the option key or the control key or the open apple key, or other standard symbols for the Macintosh keyboard. Apparently it is a handy reference to have all the popular symbols for the special keys on the keyboard. Here they are more or less in order from left to right, including Unicode Hex code point references:

⎋	Escape	U+238B
⇥	Tab forward	U+21E5
⇤	Tab back	U+21E4
⇪	Capslock	U+21EA
⇧	Shift	U+21E7
⌃	Control	U+2303
⌥	Option (Alt, Alternative)	U+2325
	Apple symbol 1	U+F8FF
⌘	Command (Open Apple) 2	U+2318
␣	Space	U+2423
⏎ ↩	Return	U+23CE U+21A9
⌫	Delete back	U+232B
⌦	Delete forward	U+2326
﹖⃝	Help	U+003F & U+20DD
⇱ ↖ ↸	Home	U+21F1 U+2196 U+21B8
⇲ ↘	End	U+21F2 U+2198
⇞	Pageup	U+21DE
⇟	Pagedown	U+21DF
↑ ⇡	Up arrow	U+2191 U+21E1
↓ ⇣	Down arrow	U+2193 U+21E3
← ⇠	Left arrow	U+2190 U+21E0
→ ⇢	Right arrow	U+2192 U+21E2
⌧	Clear	U+2327
⇭	Numberlock	U+21ED
⌤	Enter	U+2324
⏏	Eject	U+23CF
⌽	Power 3	U+233D

For information on how to type or enter these symbols in your documents, have a look at Entering Unicode Text and Symbols.
1 The Apple symbol  is in the corporate private range and is only available in Mac fonts. It can be typed with Option+Shift+k ( ⌥⇧+k ).
2 For the history on the Apple key symbol/Command key symbol, have a look here.

3 Most fonts render this code point as IEC 5010 "line within a circle", , not , IEC 5009 "line partially within a broken circle" which is found on newest keyboards, though some fonts do.

(If any symbol isn't displaying correctly, Unicode font replacement is the culprit. Everything tests great in latest versions of Safari and Firefox.)

Last updated: 9/19/12