• This document contains some technical details about Irish Accessories. For installation instructions and a brief summary, close this document and open the TeachText document called ‘Read Me Before Installation’.
• Background
The Macintosh was designed from the outset to be able to work well with non-English languages, so it has facilities for ‘localising’ some of its features to a particular country or region.
Apple supplies many variations of the Macintosh for different languages and regions; for instance, for the French language there is a French system and a French Canadian system. For the English language, there is an American system, an Australian system and a British system.
In Ireland, the British system is generally used. Many people use the Irish language, either occasionally or frequently, so we have made Irish Accessories to provide some additions to the Macintosh to make it easier to use the Mac for Irish. The English-language facilities of the Macintosh are not affected.
• Fadas on the Macintosh
When the Mac was first introduced, it had sets of characters (or 'fonts') that included some, but not all, of the accented vowels. So, for example, É is present, but not capital ó. When capital ó is typed in a standard font, the Mac draws a ‘missing character’ box indicating an unprintable character. Another difficulty was that keyboard access to accented characters was a little awkward.
Later on, Postscript and Truetype fonts were introduced that include, among others, all the accented vowels necessary for the Irish cló Rómhánach, including capital ó. Apple calls these 'extended' fonts.
Some of the most important fonts - Geneva, Chicago, Monaco and New York - haven't been fully extended yet, so Irish Accessories enhances them to include fadas on all vowels.
Here is a picture of a folder whose name is ‘áthas íontach mhór’ written in capitals in the normal Geneva font.
As you can see, the capital-á, capital-í and capital-ó are missing and are drawn with missing character boxes.
The next picture shows the same folder (with the same name), but whose name is drawn using the Enhanced Geneva font provided in Irish Accessories.
• Keyboard Access to 'Fadas'.
On UK and US Macintoshes, vowels with fadas are obtained by typing option-e followed by the vowel. The Irish Keyboard layout allows a fada to be put on a vowel by holding down the option key while typing the vowel, and also rationalises access to other accented characters. On account of this, most users prefer it to the standard British or American keyboard layouts. (See the note for QuickMenus users at the end of this document.)
• Dates on the Macintosh
The Macintosh keeps date information in the form of the number of seconds since midnight on January 1, 1904. This is used along with formatting information to write the date or time. An Irish version of the formatting information, with Irish names, is included in Irish Accessories.
• Sorting on the Macintosh
For sorting to be done correctly, account must be taken of accented letters (like á) and ligatures, (like æ), so that they are placed in the right order. The Macintosh handles most of these cases correctly, but some adjustments are necessary on older Macintosh Operating Systems. Software to do this is included in Irish Accessories.
• The ‘Irish Accessories’ Disk
The disk is for installing and removing the Irish Accessories from your system disks. It contains the following items:
- This file, called 'Some Technical Details' (a TeachText document)
- 'Read Me before Installation' (Summary and installation instructions)
- TeachText
- Installer (version 3.4)
- Irish Script (an Installer document)
- Irish Installer Stuff - a folder
‘Irish Installer Stuff’ contains the following items:
- Irish (a Macintosh machine icon with a Shamrock on the screen, faith & begorrah!),
- Irish Resources (a suitcase icon with a Shamrock on the side),
- International - a Control Panel device that allows you to select regional variations of Day & Month spelling, layout, etc.
- Fonts - versions of Geneva, New York, Monaco and Chicago fonts that have fadas on all the vowels.
• Irish Script contains a list of orders for the Installer to add the following resources to a system:
- An Irish Keyboard layout, giving easy access to 'fadas'.
- Sorting routines to handle accents (including fadas) occuring in words properly.
- Irish names & formats for the days & months.
- Modified fonts with fadas on all vowels.
• The Irish Keyboard
The Irish Keyboard layouts are based on the standard (System 7) American and British keyboards, with the basic aim of making ‘fadas’ easily accessible.
There are actually two Irish Keyboard layouts, for British-system or American-system keyboards. The reason for the two layouts is that a British keyboard has a '£' over the '3' key, whereas an American keyboard has a '#'.
To decide which keyboard to select for ‘Easy Install’, the Installer checks the System: if it's British, the (£) keyboard layout is used; otherwise the (#) keyboard layout is chosen.
If you wish, you can customise your installation later by installing the Irish Keyboard (#) or (£) of your choice.
◊ Choosing the Irish Keyboard
Once you have installed the keyboard, select the Irish Keyboard by opening the ‘Keyboard’ device in the Control Panel. The Irish keyboard is marked with a Shamrock. Select it by clicking on it. The keyboard will stay selected until you select another keyboard.
◊ Using the Irish Keyboard.
To type a vowel with a fada on the Irish Keyboard, hold down the option key when typing the vowel in the normal way.
In order to arrange that the ‘fadas’ can be selected in this manner, a few other characters have been moved around on the keyboard. Most of these changes are simplifications of the previous arrangement. (Note that you can check the position of any character at any time using the ‘Key Caps’ desk accessory.)
Here is a list of the changes. (To try them out, ensure the Irish Keyboard is installed and selected - see the ‘Keyboard’ control in the Control Panel.)
´ All letters with acute accents (i.e. ‘fadas’) are available by holding down the option key in addition to the normal keys. E.g. á is entered by typing option-a, É is entered by typing option-shift-e, etc. For QuickMenus users, capital-ó is available as option-shift-y.
` All letters with graves are now available on a two-key selection: option-` followed by the letter (i.e. an extension of the UK and US system) .
¨ All letters with umlauts are now available on a two-key combination: option-: [i.e. option-shift-;] followed by the letter (an extension of the UK and US system, but using option-: instead of option-u, which has become ú. Mnemonic: - ¨ is like a : on its side!)
^ All letters with circumflex are now available on a two-key combination: option-^ [i.e. option-shift-6] followed by the letter (an extension of the UK & US system, but using option-^ instead of option-i, which has become í) .
~ All letters with an ~ are now available on a two-key combination: opt-~ [i.e. option-shift-`] followed by the letter. (Still available on a two-key combination option-n etc.).
°, å, Å These three characters are now combined on a two-key selection starting with option-k, as follows:
å option-k followed by a
Å option-k followed by A
° option-k followed by a space gives just °.
ø,Ø option-shift-h and option-shift-j respectively.
‰ option-% [i.e. opt-shift-5]
fi option-shift-f (ligatured fi)
fl option-shift-g (ligatured fl)
In summary, the ‘fadas’ have been put in place, the displaced characters have been moved to other key-combinations and all changes are visible in Key Caps.
You can use the ‘Keyboard’ Control Panel device to select the Irish keyboard or any other keyboard at any time. However, since it's a simplification of the existing British or American layouts, and since all characters are still available, most users leave it selected permanently.
• Irish Days & Months
This allows the user to select Irish versions of the day and month wherever they are automatically generated by the system. In systems prior to System 7, some small adjustments are also made to the System's ability to abbreviate names.
Because of a restriction in formatting, the longest name allowed for a month is 15 characters, including spaces. Hence the standard ‘Deireadh Fómhair’ is replaced by ‘Deire Fómhair‘.
Once installed, you can use the ‘International’ Control Panel device to select or deselect Irish Days & Months. If you change the selection, you need to restart your Macintosh before your new selection takes effect. In System 7.1 you can use the ‘Date & Time’ Control Panel to do this and restarting is unnecessary.
• Irish Sorting
Up until System 6.0.4, the standard US & British ‘International’ Sorting utilities did not fully handle the correspondence between vowels and vowels with accents. The Irish Sorting utilities correct this problem.
In System version 6.0.4 and later, this problem has been corrected, and special Irish sorting utilities are unnecessary. (The Installer will remove them.)
Sorting is not affected by the font of the words or characters being sorted.
Irish Sorting is only necessary - and only available - in systems prior to System 6.0.4. Once installed , you can use the ‘International’ Control Panel device to select or deselect it. Since it's an extension of British sorting, most users leave it selected permanently. If you change the selection, you need to restart your Macintosh before your new selection takes effect.
• The file called ‘Irish’
This is in the Installer Stuff folder. This may be copied by the Installer into the System Folder; it replaces some of the system's core sorting and comparison utilities to enable them to handle accented vowels correctly. In Macintosh System 6.0.4 and later, the Irish file is unnecessary and the Installer will remove it.
• Major Upgrades of the System
As you may be aware, the application programs you use rely on a set of utility programs collected together in the 'System' file in the System Folder. These ‘System’ programs are continually being improved, and therefore, over time, slightly different versions of the System appear. For example System 7.1 is a later revision than 7.0. Most of these revisions are essentially invisible to Irish Accessories, but major upgrades generally have some effects. A major upgrade is signalled by a change in the system's ‘version number’ (its version number is its first digit). So, for instance, a change from System 5.xx (where 'xx' stands for any sequence of characters) to 6.xx is a major upgrade. Likewise, a change from System 6.xx to 7.xx is a major upgrade.
◊ You may need to re-install your Irish Accessories after an upgrade, particularly a major upgrade. The version number of Irish Accessories keeps in step with that of the System, so you can use this to ensure that your Irish Accessories are reasonably up-to-date.
• Happy Macintoshing
We hope that you enjoy using your Macintosh even more with Irish Accessories.
• QuickMenus users please note that QuickMenus makes use of option-shift-o for its own purposes, in contravention to Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines. If you do use QuickMenus, note that capital-ó is also available as option-shift-y.
