date:20090923

Re: anyone see any improvements in latest itunes?

2009-09-23 Thread william lomas


i dn't even see a song tables anymore in my itunes

On 23 Sep 2009, at 04:24, Woody Anna Dresner wrote:


 Hi,

 I just updated to the new version of iTunes, 9.1 I think it is. I
 don't see any improvements in accessibility; there are still the same
 focus issues with the column browser, and the songs table in the
 iTunes store is just as hard to navigate as before. Does anyone else
 see any improvements over the previous iTunes 9?

 Best,
 Anna


 


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Keyboard and Character Palette options [was Re: Typing special characters]

2009-09-23 Thread Esther

Hi Lindsay,

Simon has answered your question about some Unicode combinations. For
non-English languages, it is possible to deal with the issue of typing
special characters by switching to another input language keyboard.
Alternatively, for accents and more common special characters, using
the Option key in combination with the Control, Command, and Shift
keys give many of the necessary characters. If I need to type special
characters as part of names, I'll use the Option key method to
generate accents:

acute accent - Option-e
grave accent - Option-accent sign (on an Engish input keyboard, this
is the leftmost key below escape and above tab)
circumflex accent - Option-i
diaeresis - Option-u
tilde - Option-n

This group are dead keys. You need to type the accented letter
after the Option+letter combination, so to type an e with an acute
accent you press the Option+e keys, release, and then type the letter
e. If your press Return without typing a letter, you simply get
the accent mark.

Other accents that are closely associated with particular letters are
not dead keys; pressing the two key combination generates the special
character:

German eszett or sharp ess - Option-s
Nordic slashed o - Option-o
C with cedilla - Option-c
oe ligature - Option-q

For other special characters, the Mac provides a tool called the
Character Palette. Although I use this, it is far less convenient
than using modified keyboard inputs, so this was the incentive for
figuring out ways to type common symbols without reverting to the
Character Palette.

What you would have to do to use the Character Palette is to open
TextEdit and go to the Edit menu on the menu bar (VO-M, press E,
and arrow down) and press s p quickly or use your arrow keys to
navigate to the Special Characters menu option. I can describe how
to use this, but I really think there may be better options, because
the problem that I find using the Character Palette is that it's
overkill -- there are too many options to easily use this mode for
regular text entry. You don't just get the main IPA phonetic symbols,
but absolutely every accented variety mingled into the same table that
you have to navigate through. Your best shot is to go through and
figure out the ones you'll really want, and save them as favorites,
but you could just about use your web site and copy the characters
into a personalized text file. (I assume you are going to:

http://ipa.typeit.org/

to Type IPA symbols online.)

A better alternative solution is to look for an input keyboard devised
for IPA entry. I'm not a linguistics major, but my first reaction is
that nobody who wanted to work efficiently with phonetic character
input on a Mac would use the Character Palette on a regular basis. So
I ran a Google search on Mac IPA keyboard, and sure enough there
are pages that encode special IPA keyboards for the Mac. There are
software tools that allow you to customize and add keyboards to your
Mac. Then you can switch keyboards just as though you were switching
to a different input language keyboard on your menu bar, and even
define a shortcut sequence to use your alternate keyboard.

Here's a page called IPA SIL keyboards for Mac OS X:

http://scripts.sil.org/cms/SCRIPTs/page.php?site_id=nrsiitem_id=ipa-sil_keyboard

I would take a look at this web page and the top level home page for
links on using IPA fonts, and then try installing this keyboard.
(Apparently, documentation on how to install the keyboard is included
with the download files).

There's also a site called: Using IPA fonts with Mac OS X: The
Comprehensive Guide

http://linguisticmystic.com/2007/03/08/using-ipa-fonts-with-mac-os-x-the-comprehensive-guide/

that came up as the second item on my Google Search. This looks like
a good starting point for general information on using IPA fonts on
the Mac, where you can go to get them (including the first linked
site), how you install things, etc.

Finally, as another alternative, you can try using TeX (through the
TeXShop software interface), as Justin suggested. This word processor
will certainly handle any special characters you throw at it -- it is
multi-lingual, multi-platform, and accessible on the Mac, and
linguistics folks are one of the groups that end up using this to
handle the special characters. The main drawback is that there's a
steep learning curve. Unless you're working in a field where this
commonly used and perhaps even required for publishing professional
papers, it's hard to get started and find answers for your special
uses. Most fields will have specialized style files and packages that
make using TeX simple for people using similar templates. What's hard
is starting from scratch with no local expertise to draw upon. The
installation and setup of the software isn't hard.

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