Congratulations! We think the Macintosh is probably the best computer you can buy.
Even better, it’s a great computer for working in Irish.
Irish Accessories will make your Macintosh ‘bilingual’ - it will still be an English language Macintosh and it will be easier than ever to do Irish work on it.
The Irish Accessories are:
• Enhanced popular fonts with fadas on all the vowels (on screen and in print)
• A revised keyboard layout giving easier access to fadas
• Day & Month names in Irish
• Irish time, currency and number formats
Irish Accessories are designed according to Apple Computer’s guidelines to be completely compatible with the rest of the Macintosh. They require no modification of your computer or its software and they are available in every application. Documents you produce containing letters with fadas are fully compatible with English-only Macintoshes and with all Apple printers.
To install Irish Accessories, open the Installer or the Irish Script and follow the instructions it gives you. Click the ‘Easy Install’ button and the Installer will automatically select and install the accessories that suit your Macintosh best. To select a special set of accessories, click the ‘Customise’ button and select from the list provided.
After installation, when you have restarted your Macintosh, open the ‘Keyboard’ Control Panel and select the ‘Irish’ keyboard. From now on, any time you want to type a vowel with a fada, just hold the Option key down and type the vowel. (On some keyboards, the Option key is called the Alt key.) To type a capital vowel with a fada, hold the Shift key down too. Experiment on any application, or on a desk accessory like Key Caps or the Note Pad - the Irish keyboard layout it available everywhere you use the keyboard. (Note: a program called QuickMenus makes use of option-shift-o for its own purposes, in contravention to Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines. If you use QuickMenus, note that capital-ó is also available as option-shift-y.)
Use the ‘Date & Time’ and ‘Numbers’ Control Panels to select the Irish layouts. From now on, whenever the Macintosh needs to show dates or numbers automatically, it will use Irish layouts. Irish Time and Number layouts are the same as their English counterparts, and are provided as a convenience to users of US or International Macintoshes.
If you want to turn off an Irish feature, don't worry - you can switch to another keyboard layout or to non-Irish Day and Month names whenever you wish, by using the appropriate Control Panels.
