Other scripts

This setup is based on 7.0.1, thus pre-WorldScript, but will still work on all modern Macs. Two caveats:

In order to get it to run, you must at least have installed the Hebrew System font. Which one it is, may be hard to find; but if there is one in the System file, it will be it. When you get it up, the Hebrew choice will be grey, inactive, while in Finder (can't do any non-European). You must start an application for Hebrew to be available. As for programs, Hebrew may create less problems in standard programs than Arabic, as it is less demanding.

Hebrew 7.1 (WorldScript) was, like Arabic, included on Nisus' Language key disks purchased before 1.1.1996. This disk also includes another keyboard for "transliteration", which means that the keys are located similar to a US logic, not a Hebrew one (alef on the left middle row, whre US has "a", then s and d etc.) These disks had similar transliteration keyboard layouts for the Persian and Hungarian scripts/languages, but not for Arabic or Russian (but such are now available with the new Language Kits). [Click here for a complete list of the resources included in the Nisus package.]

Persian

Persian under OS 7: The Nisus solution

The conflict is solved by the "both Arabic and Persian" choice. In this case, Persian is installed with the same ID numbers as when it is alone, while the Arabic resources appear with different IDs: 17923-24. Thus, surprisingly (at least for an Arabist like myself); Persian gets priority, and Arabic has to move over. This is important to note, it means that there are two kinds of Arabic resources in existence, those with IDs 17920-21 and those with IDs 17923-24. Clearly, if one were by malchance to combine bits from either system by manual installation, nothing would work, as the resource elements would not find each other. Also, one cannot install Persian on top of an Arabic system, but one can use these fixed Arabic resources to install on top of a Persian one.

The fonts, however, are apparently not renumbered: Arabic and Persian fonts have different IDs anyway, with one exception: The system font, El Kahira (al-Qahira) for Arabic and Tehran for Persian both have ID 17920, even in the combined system. I have not tried to install them to see what kind of clash this might make! or whether font ID number conflicts are a problem any longer, as long as the IDs are within the scripts resource number range.

Persian and OS 9

However, it turns out it is not quite as bad. You just have to decide in advance whether you want Arabic only, Persian only or Arabic and Persian together.

If you want Persian only, you should not use the Mac OS installer program, as in the other scripts, at all. Instead, you should just go to the "Language Kit CD Extras" folder in the "CD Extras" folder on the Install CD, and double-click on "Persian.img", which brings that up as a disk icon. Then, you drag these items from the Persian disk file to your own System folder: "Persian script"; "Persian Settings" as well as the Persian fonts (do not include the "Persian keyboard" file, that is already inside in the Persian script file).

If you want Arabic and Persian together, install Arabic in the fashion described above. Then add from the Persian.img disk icon the Persian fonts, and in this case only the "Persian keyboard" file, not the Persian Script or Persian Settings files. In this case, Arabic dominates and Persian is subservient; which means that e.g. sorting is done after the Arabic system (...n-h-w-y) and not Persian (n-w-h-y). The reason for this is evidently that Arabic and Persian potentially clash, so only the fonts and keyboards, of which you can add many, can safely be combined. There is in fact very little difference between the fonts for the two; Persian fonts have Persian shapes on the numerals (e.g. 5); and has a "riyal" symbol instead of Arabic $, but otherwise they are similar.

Turkish and Icelandic and others

But they have made a Turkish system. This works as a language under the normal Roman script, with region code 24. However, as the normal Roman fonts do not contain the Turkish characters, they have changed the fonts by adding the required letters, and then let them masquerade as "normal" Geneva, Monaco, Times etc; with the same names and same IDs as the unmodified ones. This works OK within one single machine, the Roman system script expects Geneva and finds Geneva. But when you go outside your own machine, you get problems. E.g., if you try to print such a document with Turkified Times on a laser printer, the printer (which has not been modified) will just see the name Times, and use its own normal, unmodified Times. WIthout the Turkish characters.

Solution? To create versions of the Turkish fonts that look the same, but have a different name and ID from the standard English. Of course, these fonts would be new fonts, so your document would have to written in these fonts from the beginning. Such fonts exist.

The same problem occurs for Icelandic, while this belongs to the Latin 1 category, Apple did not include their characters in its standard System (the only Latin 1 language missing). Again, they have created a "fix" with speical fonts, which look like Geneva etc. but include these characters. But there, they have at least had the intelligence to give the modified fonts new Icelandic names [in conformity to Icelandic ideology, as it were] so there is not so much problems with using them toegether with standard fonts. (Apparently, a similar problems exists for Rumanian, which also falls between Apple's West and East European systems, and the Sami languages. There is a fixed Rumanian character set, an apparently a de-facto accepted Sami one, the latter is probably not supported by Apple)

Russian

This is available on the OS 9 disks, and there was also a "Cyrillic Language Kit" (see here for comparative detail, what is said about Arabic will mostly also go for Cyrillic).

[For OS 7]: If you by chance have one of the (no longer available on-line) complete Russian systems and want to install only the relevant resources, you have to dig out:

That is all that is needed for Russian. It does not require such extensions and control panels, as Arabic. Restart. If you have got everything right; you should have a new menu to the right of the balloon icon, with a small US flag. That is the keyboards menu, you will find Russian (written in Cyrillic) under it. NB: Non-European scripts cannot be used in Finder, only in applications / programs, so Russian will be grey until you start some program.

Russian 7.1 (WorldScript) was, like Arabic, included on Nisus' Language key disk (no longer sold after 1.1.96). However, it is interesting to note that this installation only included the Russian keyboard layout, while there are references on the disk to Bulgarian, Ukrainan and a transliteration keyboard there, none of these are included but it may mean that they exist somewhere.

For further info on Russianizing a Mac, check this Web address.

East European

Greek

Thus for Greek all you need are some Greek fonts, which you either buy from a font company like Linguist's, or probably find on-line. If the fonts use special keyboard layouts, you will normally get them with the font; if not, they are designed for the standard US keyboard layout. If they (the professional fonts) are based on a Greek WorldScript script, they should provide it, but I suspect most will not, since WS isn't really necessary for Greek. In any case, you can use the font in any word processing or other program; like any English font, regardless of WorldScript compatibility.

Possibly for this reason, Greek seems not to be among the many scripts that are included in the OS 9 installation disks (neither are Turkish or Icelandic, other "logical problems" in Apple's WorldScript system).

South and East Asian scripts

Scripts with large character sets are grouped together as "WorldScript II". There are "language kits" with the necessary resources for Chinese (CLK) and Japanese (JLK), and Korean. Apple has made a list of thirty-one different scripts (writing systems), but many are still only theoretical.

The east Asian scripts (CJK as they are called) share some of the same problems as Arabic, that many applications have problems with them / assume things which are not true; but it may not be the same problems. I don't think Microsoft Word works with anything, but WordPerfect 3, if you can find it, will work OK with Japanese and Chinese, so does e.g. FrameMaker, although neither works with Arabic.

The major difference is however market size and strength, which makes it more tempting to make specialized versions of standard programs for Japan than for the Arabic market. Thus, you will find e.g. special Japanese versions of MacWrite, something we will probably never get for Arabic. Also, the dongle protection is less common in Japan. Notice that there is even a distinction within the CJK group, as the Chinese market is of course even more rife with software piracy than the Arabic one, if that is possible.

For the same reason, market size and sophistication of networks and equipment, you will find that many common Internet programs have Japanese versions, or will work with Japanese but not necessarily with any other scripts (except maybe Russian, which is less problematic than e.g. Arabic). Thus, Eudora, Newswatcher, TurboGopher and Netscape will all work with Japanese either in the standard or a modified version.

All the East Asian scripts; Korean, Japanese, Chinese Simplified and Traditional, are included in OS 9. If you want to know more about Japanese stuff from people who know about it, you can click here.

Creating a new script (for Esperanto)

Setting up your own script isn't really something you can do on your own. Apple has defined a finite set of scripts, so anything new would conflict with exisiting scripts.

Since Apple doesn't have a script for Latin 3 (it does for Latin 2, which is EastEurRoman); they appear to think that these languages should fit under Roman -- which they don't; e.g. Turkish (another Latin 3 language) is defined by Apple as Roman, although its character set is not covered by the Apple set; the Turkish system uses a hack which creates various problems [see above].

In your case, you would probably have to create your own solution under the standard Roman script:

(1) Create or get hold a font that covers the characters you need (FontoGrapher or similar will do it).
(2) If you find a font online, but don't like the keyboard layout, create a new one with ResEdit, as you say.
(3) If (2) applies, open the itlc Resource of the System file and set Always show Icon to 1, to get the keyboards menu [in OS 7]. However, if you make the font yourself, you may make it suit the normal US keyboard, and you can forget about steps (2) and (3).
Making a sorting order (itl2) is, I believe, beyond normal ResEdit hacking; as I have been told, it requires some assembly; or at least some real programming competence. Beyond me, so I don't know much more about it. However, again, if you make your own font, and sorting is a priority, it might make sense to organize the the characters so that the ASCII numbers fit the desired sorting order, and then create a keyboard layout as in (2) and (3) to let them fall logically on the keyboard. Many applications will sort according to the straight ASCII order.

Under (1); I have done so with Times for another purpose, and the word I got from Adobe here was, that I could only distribute the postscript version of my font to people who already owned a software version of Times. I.e., people who owned AdobeTypeManager. Once you do, apparently they didn't mind that you use a hacked version of the same. I have, using common-sense analogy, assumed that the same thing goes for TrueType; i.e. that if you own TrueType Times, you can also freely use a hacked version of the same; and since everyone with a Mac either owns TrueType Times or can get it from ftp.apple.com; I take TrueType derivations to be generally distributable. However, I am sure that Adobe and Apple still have the copyright to the fonts you make.

I use only English and French under OS 7, but I would still like to have a keyboard menu. Can I?