Hi All,

I am a new convert to Mac and OSX, happily poking around the new OS on my new laptop. Are there any major words of wisdom for living the multi-lingual life on OSX? I've got internationalization setup and chrome+rikaikun, but that's about it!

ヤルー！
k

[ファブリス]

Did you setup Kotoeri for Japanese input?

Look into dictionaries. Pressing Cmd+Ctrl+D usually activates a dictionary lookup with the highlighted word. You can buy dictionaries, but also find many for free.

I think you have two Japanese dictionaries shipped with OSX. Type Cmd+Alt+Space for activate Spotlight, type "dict", the Dictionary app should highlight. Type Enter. Cmd+comma activates Prefs in most apps. In the Dictionary Prefs you can check which ones are installed (they are actually stored in /Library/Dictionaries/).

Small Chinese Dictionary


You can of course use the browser add ons, and there's something worth noting here is Chrome does not actually support Cmd+Ctrl+D Dictionary lookup AFAIK. It's good to know about as you'll find a few "ported over" software such as Thunderbird also tend not to support all the integrated OSX functionality.

Mac OSX Keyboard Shortcuts

Awesome, thanks for the dictionary tips and comments. Very useful! I did setup kotoeri, btw, but I disabled all but hiragana input for ease of selection and hotkey-based conversion.

Man, I can't get over how awesome this trackpad is

I don't own a Mac (but I need to work with them a lot) though I thought this thread on EPWING readers for the Mac was good.

More so a question about EPWING dictionaries than about Mac, (although coincidentally I do own one) do you find the EPWING dictionaries useful? I downloaded a few and always found I resorted back to online dictionaries coupled with rikaichan. The EPWING dicts were not able to handle conjugations and more colloquial stuff. I ended up deleting them in the end. Just curious as to your reasons for using them.

ファブリス Wrote:Did you setup Kotoeri for Japanese input?

Skip kotoeri and download google's IME, it's far better.

Get keyholeTV for mac so you at least have it there. Anki etc. My advice is to not have a lot of stuff on your mac so the only option is Japanese. I uninstalled all my games programs that I used for non japanese fun. Make sure you can open rar files as I'm not sure it comes with software to do it. If you don't have it yet get the mac version of openoffice. Theres not much you need to do with mac most of the tools like being able to read Japanese text is already set up which is great.

zigmonty Wrote:

ファブリス Wrote:Did you setup Kotoeri for Japanese input?

Skip kotoeri and download google's IME, it's far better.

Why is google Ime better?

When I installed it on windows I didn't see any difference between windows ime and google ime!

Since your Macbook got a multi-touch trackpad you can also use handwriting input. It's intended for Chinese though, so you won't be able to write all Kanji with it.

jettyke Wrote:

zigmonty Wrote:

ファブリス Wrote:Did you setup Kotoeri for Japanese input?

Skip kotoeri and download google's IME, it's far better.

Why is google Ime better?

When I installed it on windows I didn't see any difference between windows ime and google ime!

Way better recognition of words and auto complete. It regularly knows the names of movies, novels, etc as well as place and person names. I stump the default windows and mac IMEs constantly and have to resort to typing out a kanji at a time using other words. That just doesn't really happen with the google one. Also subjectively feels nicer to use, imho anyway.

dusmar84 Wrote:More so a question about EPWING dictionaries than about Mac, (although coincidentally I do own one) do you find the EPWING dictionaries useful? I downloaded a few and always found I resorted back to online dictionaries coupled with rikaichan. The EPWING dicts were not able to handle conjugations and more colloquial stuff. I ended up deleting them in the end. Just curious as to your reasons for using them.

Well, I guess if you don't like to conjugate stuff, Rikaichan is better, but I mostly use Daijisen/Meikyou/Koujien/Sanseido Kokugo dictionaries with the Green Goddess and EDICT as backup and there is very little (including colloquial words) at least one of them can't find in my daily novel reading.
I also like how portable EPWING files are. I can use the same dictionaries on my computer and on my Blackberry, and EPWING reader software seems to be available for most OSs and mobile devices so one can use EPWING dictionaries almost anywhere.

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I only learned this after one year of using OS X : hold Shift while using the scroll wheel on the mouse, to scroll content horizontally. Very handy, especially in Finder and some web pages.

The Macbook's "scroll wheel" is two fingers swipe up/down so maybe holding shift will work there too.

you can just put two fingers and swipe left and right. the Finger shortcuts will help you out a ton so look them up and also you can manage a couple different screens to sort out your windows. I have ANKI on one, PDF BOOK on another, WEB and Japanese TV, and then the last one has like Open office or something.

[ファブリス]

Shift + Volume Up/Down/Mute keys to change volume without the "plop" sound... a godsend when you often move the volume around for YouTube videos/podcasts etc.

Alt + Shift + Volume keys = 25% increments.

Also, as a OS X convert, and a moderate keyboard user in Windows you may feel hampered at first.

Go to Keyboard > Keyboard shortcuts > select "All controls"

Now you can see a blue halo around the focused item. It takes some getting used to, but you press SPACEBAR to activate the halo'ed button. You press ENTER to activate the default BLUE button.

Example: press CTRL + Eject for the sleep dialog. Then TAB + SPACE will activate "Sleep", but just pressing ENTER will activate "Shut Down".

Speaking of sleep... Cmd + Alt + Eject sends your computer to sleep; bypassing the dialog.

ファブリス Wrote:Shift + Volume Up/Down/Mute keys to change volume without the "plop" sound... a godsend when you often move the volume around for YouTube videos/podcasts etc.

Or you could just disable the plop in the sound options.