Customised fonts (using ASCII 0-255) and Apple's Keyboard Viewer

[Alan Howlett]

Hello All

Some years ago I created/modified a sizeable number of fonts  and created six keyboard layouts for my lexicographer brother.

Using ASCII 0-255 (not Unicode) as a starting point, I created/modified many Russian, English and Phonetic fonts.

Keyboard layouts were created (in Mac OS 9 using ResEdit) for inputting the characters of these, sometimes heavily customised fonts.

This allowed the Key Caps application on screen to reflect the choices available when holding down modifier keys whilst staying within a word processing application, ie, no need to select the Key Caps application each time to ascertain which characters are visible with given modifiers/modifier combinations.

Recently I ported the keyboard layouts from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X 10.9, 10.10,10.11.

They work well and Ukelele is a joy to use, but a Ukelele layout needs to be open in Ukelele to use it as a modifier key guide and then also needs to be selected outside of a WP application, ie, is not accessible automatically whilst working within a WP application.

The OS X (10.9 to 10.11) Keyboard Viewer does allow automatic display of characters under various modifier keys/combinations, however, as the modified fonts are not Unicode, 'gibberish' appears instead of the fonts characters.

Do I have to port the fonts to Unicode (dozens of them!) to achieve automatic display in Keyboard Viewer?

Or, does a replacement for Apple's Keyboard Viewer exist which will automatically reflect modifier keys (without leaving a WP application?)

Grateful for anything helpful…

Thanks

Alan.

[Sorin Paliga]

Alan

In those times, it was usual to create custom fonts, and associate keyboard layouts to such custom fonts. Now, it is highly recommended (to not say it is mandatory) to use unicode fonts. First of all, there are some very good free fonts for linguistic or dialectal texts (e.g. Gentium) or commercial, but not expensive fonts (e.g. Aphabetum, Juan José Marcos). There are also good keylayouts, e.g. IPA Unicode or, if you allow, my US Academic (I should not be lazy and update it a little bit). 

Cyrillic, including extended Cyrillic and Old church Slavonic are also available in good free fonts, e.g. Dilyana (for OCS), while Extended Cyrillic (for noting non-Slavic languages of the former Soviet Union) is available in many current fonts. 

If you have your own fonts, I would therefore suggest to ‘unicodify’ them, so that you may come up with the times. You complicate your life too much if you choose another way. But, of course, the choice is yours.

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