Alternate for Keyman on a Mac Re: Crossovers and parallels

[#HIRAM RANDALL RING#]

Hi Claire,

  If you start Ukelele, create a new keyboard file, then open the character map on your Mac; hold down the 'alt-option' key on your Mac, you'll notice the keyboard layout in Ukelele will change; while holding down the 'alt-option' key you should be able to simply drag and drop characters from the open character map to any key on the Ukelele keyboard layout.

  I created a keyboard layout this way so that holding 'alt-option'+'n' gives me IPA 'eng'. using the 'alt' key combination theoretically gives you 49 keys available for re-mapping. If that's not enough, hold down 'alt'+'shift' (might be useful for diacritics, for example) and Ukelele gives you another 49 keys to drag-drop Unicode characters to. It's true dead keys don't work (if you're used to keyman it might be difficult to relearn), but given the option of keys like 'alt' that work very much like the shift key on a standard keyboard, I consider it a small price to pay for being able to enter odd characters directly into Toolbox or any other document on my Mac.

Regards,
Hiram
________________________________________
From: Claire Bowern [clairebowern at gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, December 09, 2011 5:50 PM
To: #HIRAM RANDALL RING#
Cc: r-n-l-d
Subject: Re: Alternate for Keyman on a Mac Re: Crossovers and parallels

It looks like only some keyboard remappings work in Crossover/Toolbox. In my keyboards, the characters that use remappings work, but the ones that use deadkeys (e.g. ä produced by ; and then a, as sequential keystrokes) do not. For the typing I do, I can't imagine using drag and drop, and even deadkeys are inefficient.
Claire

On Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 10:30 PM, #HIRAM RANDALL RING# wrote:

Hi Tom and all.

  Regarding an alternative solution for Keyman on a Mac, try using Ukelele (developed by an SIL programmer who uses a mac). http://scripts.sil.org/<http://scripts.sil.org/>ukelele - it creates a unicode keyboard layout file recognized by Mac that you can load on startup.

  Mine is loaded permanently, and I can access Roman characters as well as more esoteric sounds like: ŋ, ɲ, ɪ ɛ, ə, ʔ, ∫, ʒ, and even diacritics etc.. which I just typed now by using the 'alt-option' key along with preset characters. Those characters should come through fine if your email program is set up to read unicode - basically, if it's unicode and you can find it in your character map, you can map it to a key in Ukelele.

  I have been using Crossover with mac to run Toolbox for the last year (your option #3), and have setup a unicode keyboard in Ukelele (a simple drag-and-drop from the character map) that works great for inputting characters - not only in Toolbox, but in just about any other document editor as well.

  The one place it doesn't seem to work is in Transcriber for Mac, which is another issue, as I use the Transcriber > Toolbox > Elan workflow for time-aligning my transcriptions of sound and video. Unfortunately the Transcriber program is not user-friendly on Mac at all (the newest version doesn't even run on my mac), and I can't figure out how to get it to recognize unicode characters, so if I want IPA I have to manually replace characters once I get the transcription into Toolbox.

  The best way I've found for using Ukelele is to set up your special keys to work when holding down the "alt/option" key, as this is a key that Crossover and Toolbox and other programs don't use much for mapping special functions.

  There is some good documentation to go along with Ukelele as well, which I found to be helpful in setting up my keyboard map and putting it in the right place for OSX to find it.

Regards,
Hiram


On Dec 9, 2011, at 8:45 AM, Tom Honeyman wrote:

For those that might be a little lost about what this thread is about, essentially Toolbox and many other Linguistics oriented programs run only Windows (XP, 7 etc), and there are people out there on Apple computers or running a Linux based operating system who would like to be able to run these programs. However, if you're running a linux based operating system, I suspect you're technically savvy enough not to need to read this email.

If you're on a Mac, and you're confused about the options then read on.

To run Toolbox and potentially other Windows only programs, broadly speaking there are 3 possible solutions:

(1) get a separate computer running a windows based operating system (or use "Boot Camp" if you're on an Intel based mac (ie relatively recent mac)).
(2) run a "virtual" computer inside your computer and install Windows on this.
(3) emulate windows and run your applications through that, using Crossover or Wine.

Solution (1) requires that you buy or find a separate computer, but this is at least reasonably straight forward. If you're not tech savvy but you're okay using a Windows PC then this is often the easiest solution. But the cost of this solution is the cost of the new computer (or find a second hand one - Toolbox does not need the latest and greatest computer). Consider getting a cheap netbook if this solution appeals. A major disadvantage for this solution is that your files will be spread across two computers. But you could always store them on a USB flash drive and then plug that into the computer you want to use.

Solution (1a) is "Boot Camp". Boot Camp (http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/) is an alternative for the moderately tech savvy mac users. It allows you to install Windows straight onto your mac, but will mean you have to restart your computer every time you want to use Toolbox, and you cannot simultaneously use Toolbox with your regular Apple programs. The costs associated with this solution are the purchase a of Windows license. There are academic versions available, and some academic institutions may have a site license which means you don't have to pay at all.

Solution (2) is technically harder than solution (1). There are three possible contenders: Parallels and VMWare Fusion, and VirtualBox. The first two are commercial products with various degrees of technical support available, the third is free, with community based support. Again if you are not tech savvy, I would lean towards the commercial solutions. And so the costs would be both the cost of the software _and_ a windows license. Advantages to this solution are that you can run Mac and (any) Windows programs side by side. Some confusing points can be locating your files, cutting a pasting between programs, and managing a "virtual" computer inside your actual computer. But the advantages are many - everything is (pretty much) in the one location, the windows programs run very robustly, and especially with the commercial software, the tightness of integration means you may not even be aware of the difference between Toolbox and any other application on your mac.

Solution (3) is also technically harder than (1), and while Toolbox runs reasonably well, I have failed to run many other SIL Linguistics programs. The cost is lower however - you only need to purchase Codeweaver's Crossover, and there are academic versions available. The software is updated frequently, but their business model is to make you pay for support (and major updates) on an ongoing basis (but you don't have to update if everything works!). Integration between regular Mac programs and windows programs is reasonably tight, but at times confusing - for instance when it comes to closing/quitting Toolbox. Keyman does not work, and I have yet to come up with a reasonable solution to typing in non-standard characters. Key combinations can also be a little confusing. Cutting and pasting between documents can be a little buggy. The major advantage is that this is the cheapest solution to get Toolbox running on your mac.

Crossover is actually a commercial repackaging of the freely available and open source "Wine" software. If you know how to install Wine then this email is not for you. But FYI it is the only legal free solution that does not require the purchase of a windows license (actually, technically in some cases you are required to own a windows license but you don't need to use it).

So here is how I would break it down based on different user's scenarios:

"Argh, it's all too hard... I want an easy solution!": use a separate Windows PC computer with a thumb drive to store your files. Of course lugging around two computers may actually be harder in some cases!

"I'm not afraid to try something trickier. I want to run Toolbox only and I want the cheapest (legal) solution": run Wine, or if you don't know how to do that, run Codeweaver's Crossover. VirtualBox is potentially a better cheap option if you can get ahold of a windows license for free (ie through work etc).

"I'm not afraid to try something trickier. I want convenience. I don't care what it costs": run Parallels or VMWare Fusion (where the integration is more transparent), or if on a budget, run VirtualBox. Of course, VirtualBox will be the cheapest if you can get ahold of a windows license for free.

None of these solutions are perfect. So in addition, consider writing a friendly email to the SIL Toolbox/Fieldworks team praising them on their excellent software (a bargain at that price too if I may say so!), and saying how nice it would be if they could produce a genuine cross-platform solution.

Cheers,
Tom

On 08/12/2011, at 11:33 AM, Xavier Barker wrote:

You don't even need to be booting the VM everytime you use it.  You can pause it (or save state) and just reload it in a ready state every time you need it, which is a great option if you're seriously so time poor you can't wait a few minutes for the VM to load.  You'll find a lot of software is dependent on a fair bit of backend stuff happening in Windows (like Keyman) which is why they don't work as expected under emulated conditions.

On 08/12/2011, at 11:24 AM, Aidan Wilson wrote:

Given how many programs you intend to use, I argue again that a virtual machine is the best approach. I agree that crossover allows you to easily open a project without booting the machine, but the ram and cpu usage is higher when you have crossover and a virtual machine running. It's best to have everything in one VM.

--
Aidan Wilson

PhD Candidate in Linguistics
School of Languages and Linguistics
The University of Melbourne

+61428 458 969
aidan.wilson at unimelb.edu.au<mailto:aidan.wilson at unimelb.edu.au>
@aidanbwilson

On Thu, 8 Dec 2011, Margaret Carew wrote:

Sorry about that, I can’t get it to work either
I’ve had the LP/crossovers download sitting here – I just tried running it, but it won’t load my database.
MC
On 8/12/11 9:25 AM, "Claire Bowern" <claire.bowern at yale.edu<mailto:claire.bowern at yale.edu>> wrote:

    I've had no luck getting Lexique to work on Crossover - what settings did you use?
    Claire


    On Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 6:52 PM, Margaret Carew wrote:

          Crossovers and parallels Thanks for all the input on Crossovers and parallels for toolbox.

          After my own couple of weeks of testing I’ve decided to use both – I’m going with a parellels virtual
          machine, mainly so I can use Miromaa, running under windows 7.

          However, I like crossovers for toolbox because you go straight to it (the crossovers/Toolbox icon) and
          start up from there. If I need to I can also use it in Parallels, accessing the same files etc, but it
          seems to run a bit slower (also has the whole windows start up routine which is boring).

          And I think Lexique pro works the same way through crossovers.

          The cost wasn’t exhorbitant, paid $70 for parellels (on special last week!) and about $40 for
          crossovers. (and have access to licences for the big ticket software through work).

          cheers
--
Margaret Carew
Arandic Endangered Languages Project
Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education
Alice Springs NT 0870
08 8951 8344 / 0422 418 559
margaret.carew at batchelor.edu.au<mailto:margaret.carew at batchelor.edu.au>