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HazelGirl · Mar 13, 2005, 05:13 PM

I am not sure which forum this goes in, so I am posting it here...mods move it if its not the right place. Here goes:

I currently own a PC and I love my windows...well, no actually I hate it but for now I have to deal with it. I was thinking that maybe for grad school I would treat myself to a semi-maxed out powerbook (15 or 17....more likely 17 because i prefer a big screen) or an imac G5.

I would be going into linguistics which means I would have to deal with writing foreign characters (mostly for European Languages...likely not Cyrillic or Chinese/Japanese, etc characters but just normal letters with accents). It is soooooooooooooooooooooo annoying typing these stupid things on my pc...I have to do these horrid alt + 3 or 4 digit number combos. I know I can change my keyboard but...I like my American keyboard and I don't wanna memorize 10 different layouts!

My professor told me that in the past, most linguists used Macs because it was easier to deal with foreign characters, but now, he said, the platform is of little importance.........I dunno though.

Which one is best for dealing with linguistic data (phonetics, etc)? Using translation software? Of course, foreign characters......? I would be doing things like uploading sound files of speakers and analyzing the sounds. I would be doing other stuff too but I cannot go into detail now because I am not there yet.

Man I just want a Mac but they are uber expensive (no, i don't want a mini....I either want a Pbook or an imac G5).

Are Macs good for linguistics? Any linguists out there that use Macs?

Chuckit · Mar 13, 2005, 05:35 PM

The Mac's international support has always been a lot better than Windows'. For instance, the character � takes two keystrokes (option-e for the �, and a for the a).

As far as analyzing sounds goes, it depends on what you mean. It wouldn't be any harder to record sounds and play it back, but if you're talking about using some preexisting linguistic analysis software, that depends on whether they have the package you're looking for.

Really, I'd say it depends on whether there's any specialized software you expect to need (like AutoCAD for engineering) that's only available for Windows or DOS. I've generally heard good things about the Mac for linguistics, but my firsthand experience is limited to one class in college, so you're quite a ways past me.

CaptainHaddock · 08:16 PM

I'm not a linguist, but I'm interested in the subject and also use my Mac to type in French, German, and Japanese from time to time.

In fact, that's one of the (many) reasons I switched to my Mac. Multilingual tasks are far easier! For example:

1. Unlike Windows and its awkward Alt+numberpad combinations, all common diacritics can be easily accessed with regular keys and the option key. Option-e gives you an acute accent (�), option-u gives you a diaeresis (�), option-c gives you �, and so on. I highly recommend buying the Matias Tactile Pro keyboard, it shows all the diacritics and other alternate characters right on the keys themselves.

2. For characters not available on an English keyboard, your keyboard menu in the menubar gives you a handy chart of all characters available in the current typeface (or any other font). The entire IPA is at your beck and call this way.

3. OS X is significantly ahead of Windows when it comes to operating system-wide Unicode support. I can input any supported language into any application regardless of the system's default language, whereas I could not under Windows. Input switching merely involves adding input methods to the keyboard menu, and using Cmd-spacebar to switch.

4. OS X has excellent support for Opentype, which is very useful for a lot of the more complex scripts like Thai, Indic scripts, and Arabic.

There are many indirect benefits as well. Everything will be a little easier and a little friendlier on your Mac, letting you concentrate more on linguistics and less on being a hardware technician or security expert. The danger that a worm or virus could disrupt or wipe out your work does not exist.

HazelGirl · Mar 13, 2005, 07:29 PM

Okay..that's it. I want one. I mean I like REALLY want one. Seirously if I get a good finacnial aid packege with a decent stipend I am gonna get myself a nice mac....

Windows is just too clumbsy for this stuff. Now its just a queston of whether I would opt for a laptop or a desktop but thats a whole different topic

I really really want to switch and the only thing holding me back from getting one is money and space...lol. Its looking more and more like a graduate schol present to myself.

Millennium · Mar 13, 2005, 07:52 PM

The one thing I'm not sure about is whether there's a bundled-in font that includes all of the IPA symbols. It wouldn't surprise me if there were, but Apple has never said anything about it.

CaptainHaddock · Mar 13, 2005, 08:23 PM

"The one thing I'm not sure about is whether there's a bundled-in font that includes all of the IPA symbols. It wouldn't surprise me if there were, but Apple has never said anything about it."

Lucida Grande looks like it has a pretty complete set of IPA characters. Isn't it standard with OS X?

There are other fonts you can buy with the IPA character set, of course.

Millennium · Mar 13, 2005, 08:53 PM

Originally posted by CaptainHaddock:
"The one thing I'm not sure about is whether there's a bundled-in font that includes all of the IPA symbols. It wouldn't surprise me if there were, but Apple has never said anything about it."

Lucida Grande looks like it has a pretty complete set of IPA characters. Isn't it standard with OS X?

There are other fonts you can buy with the IPA character set, of course.

D'oh; you even mentioned this in a previous post and I missed it. Sorry about that.

wataru · Mar 14, 2005, 02:42 AM

I use Japanese and Chinese (both traditional and simplified) quite often and I'm very satisfied with the built-in input systems and text handling (although the traditional Chinese input is a but rusty).

I don't know what area of linguistics you're in, but if you need to analyze audio, I set up someone with Praat, which she found suited her needs better than the $500 piece of software she had recently purchased.

dootbran · Mar 14, 2005, 01:17 PM

My experience is pretty much limited to Japanese so I can't really comment beyond what others have said but, for what its worth, the language lab at Michigan State is entirely Macs. So, it must have something to offer linguistics students.

They've even got an entire room of cubes, not related but still pretty awesome

tom@bluesky.org · Mar 14, 2005, 01:20 PM

For some info on Mac OS X (and OS 9) language capabilities, see this site:

http://homepage.mac.com/thgewecke/mlingos9.html

The fonts that come with OS X give pretty complete coverage of anything a linguist would want, and whatever is missing is available in free fonts from SIL and other sources.

Captain Haddock said that OS X has excellent OpenType support. This is not correct. OS X cannot use OpenType layout tables needed for complex Indic scripts. Instead it uses Apple's own technology, called AAT. Fonts that have this technology are rare, and the result is that this is one area where the PC is superior -- it offers a greater range of fonts than OS X for Devanagari or Arabic, for example, and it can more easily handle some Indic and Asian scripts for which there are not yet any free AAT fonts available (Tamil, Bengali, Burmese, Khmer, Lao, Tibetan).

HazelGirl · Mar 14, 2005, 01:42 PM

Thank you very much! I have used Praat before for a phonetics project (with windows) and it was pretty fun

Yeah, methinks I will eventually invest in a Mac for linguistics. it just makes sense

tooki · Mar 14, 2005, 03:22 PM

I'm a linguistics major, so I think it's fair for me to chime in here.

Lucida Grande -- the system font -- has full IPA support (in fact, it goes well beyond basic IPA). If you install them, several of the "additional" Asian fonts, such as the Hiragino family, also have full IPA support, including some nice serif type. (Lucida Grande's sans-serif IPA is sometimes a bit jarring, but Lucida Grande has some really, really obscure IPA glyphs that even the Asian fonts lack.)

The character palette will tell you which fonts contain which glyphs.

Something nobody here mentioned is the fabulous "U.S. Extended" keyboard layout: it uses tons of dead keys (and even some double dead keys) to give access to pretty much every accented letter and the basic IPA symbols without having to resort to the character palette. With that layout, you can actually type IPA without having to break your train of thought.

tooki

HazelGirl · Mar 14, 2005, 04:45 PM

tooki!!!! are you an undergrad major right now? do u know other majors that use macs? whats your area of linguistics?

CaptainHaddock · Mar 14, 2005, 05:39 PM

Captain Haddock said that OS X has excellent OpenType support. This is not correct. OS X cannot use OpenType layout tables needed for complex Indic scripts. Instead it uses Apple's own technology, called AAT.

Really? So does OS X ignore OpenType layout tables when you install OpenType fonts? What about applications that are OpenType-aware, like InDesign?

tom@bluesky.org · Mar 14, 2005, 06:03 PM

Originally posted by CaptainHaddock:
Really? So does OS X ignore OpenType layout tables when you install OpenType fonts? What about applications that are OpenType-aware, like InDesign?

Yes, normal OS X apps that use Apple's own text engines ignore OpenType layout tables. InDesign and Mellel are two apps which have their own text engines which allow them to use some OpenType features, but generally not those needed for most complex scripts. And I don't think they can use any AAT stuff.

OS X's minimal OpenType support is a major failing which everyone would like to see fixed in a future release. Though AAT is an excellent technology, there is almost no one producing AAT fonts, and no good public tools available for making them, while for OpenType it's the opposite.

tooki · Mar 14, 2005, 08:22 PM

Originally posted by HazelGirl:
tooki!!!! are you an undergrad major right now? do u know other majors that use macs? whats your area of linguistics?

I'm an applied ling undergrad (applied as in applied to other fields, not the old meaning of "applied=teaching"). http://www.umbc.edu/mll/major%26minor.html

I don't know any other students who use Macs -- though I do know one who plans to make his next computer a Mac --, but I know that at least 3 of the ling professors (out of only like 10) use them. It's a really small major here!

tooki

HazelGirl · Mar 14, 2005, 10:49 PM

thanks for the responses all....

say, tooki...u got a pm

CaptainHaddock · Mar 15, 2005, 03:11 AM

Hey Tom�after doing some research, I discovered that Tiger might add more native OpenType support. (see http://tinyurl.com/5k2hf ) Maybe if we're lucky, OpenType will get a Cocoa API.

It would really be nice if someone like Fontlab made a tool for adding AAT layout tables to OpenType fonts with OpenType layout tables. I know they have a tool that does the reverse. Heck, someone clever could probably make a simple script to do it!

tom@bluesky.org · Mar 15, 2005, 08:18 AM

Originally posted by CaptainHaddock:
Hey Tom�after doing some research, I discovered that Tiger might add more native OpenType support.

Interesting! Thanks for the info!

It would really be nice if someone like Fontlab made a tool for adding AAT layout tables to OpenType fonts with OpenType layout tables. I know they have a tool that does the reverse. Heck, someone clever could probably make a simple script to do it!

I'm not optimistic about that. Both technologies have been around for many years (AAT used to be called GX), and if there were any easy way to add AAT to OpenType someone probably would have figured it out by now.