Changing Max OS X's ITABC Method to use QWERTZ instead of QWERTY

[luede...@googlemail.com]

Hello everybody,

I'm a german sinology student in search for some help related to
Chinese-Character-Input on Max OS X 10.5. With english not being my
mother's tongue, please excuse my mistakes while typing this text...

My problem is like this: As owning a german version of OS X 10.5. my
keyboard layout is not the US and UK standard QWERTY one but the
QWERTZ version. The main difference being Z and Y being exchanged.
Strange thing now is, that when I want to type chinese characters
using the ITABC method provided by OS X the input layout for the
pinyin version uses a QWERTY layout. With Chinese Pinyin having loads
of Ys and Zs I have a really hard time typing fluently being used to
the Z being at Y's place and Y being at Z's place on the keyboard as
it is here in Germany.
This question might be really strange to you, because you perhaps
never thought about changing from QWERTY to QWERTZ, as being
accustomed to it, but perhaps you might ever have wanted to change
something about the Chinese-Language-Input-Keyboard-Layout like the
position for a question mark or exclamation mark and so on. So it
would not be that necessary to change the whole QWERTY layout to
QWERTZ, it would be enough if there would be a way to edit the layout
so Z and Y exchanged their place.

Hopefully I could somehow explain what my problem is, obviously it's
not that easy using English to describe this as I thought it'd be.

So perhaps you might be able to help me, I'm searching the web like
forever now, not finding a solution on how to change the keyboard
layout that I am confronted with when I use ITABC method on OS X.

Thank you very much so far!

Greetings from Beijing,

Florian Wagner

[Rob Rohan]

I have not tried this, but you might try this program: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=ukelele&_sc=1

Otherwise it looks like you might be able to mess with the .keylayout
files to get the results you require ("These may be installed by
copying them to the Keyboard Layouts folder within /Library or ~/
Library; then they are enabled via the Input tab of the International
module within System Preferences").

Good luck!

[TenThousandThings]

On Dec 26, 8:15 am, "luedefen...@googlemail.com"

<luedefen...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> My problem is like this: As owning a german version of OS X 10.5. my
> keyboard layout is not the US and UK standard QWERTY one but the
> QWERTZ version. The main difference being Z and Y being exchanged.
> Strange thing now is, that when I want to type chinese characters
> using the ITABC method provided by OS X the input layout for the
> pinyin version uses a QWERTY layout. With Chinese Pinyin having loads
> of Ys and Zs I have a really hard time typing

Florian,

This is a "frequently-asked" question, though it has been a long time
since it has been asked. I don't know if it is possible to edit the
keyboard in ITABC or any of the other Apple-supplied input methods in
OS X 10.5. I do know it is not possible in OS X 10.4 and earlier.

I think probably if it were possible we would have heard about it by
now, but perhaps not, because I believe most users with this problem
have switched to using QIM, which supports international keyboards
(set the keyboard in QIM Preferences):

http://www.yale.edu/chinesemac/pages/input_methods.html#QIM

It's currently on sale for USD $12, so your timing is good!

Eric