Sunday, December 29, 2013

Write and display Batak script on Mac


Batak font used to be just another ASCII font with Batak script rendering. But it got place in Unicode and it is a "real" font now. Download it from Uli Kozok's site.

After you installed the font, you will be able to see this in Batak script: ᯂᯬᯒᯀ᯲
You will also see Batak script on sites like this: http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/batak.html

Now that it is a real font, typing on ASCII keyboard won't work anymore. A special keyboard mapping is necessary. For Mac, get the keyboard mapping from this Michael Everson's site.

Installing a Batak keyboard layout on the Mac OS:

1) Download the Mac OS Batak keyboard layout package. (The files are inside the folder “Batak-Mac-Keylayout”, which is compressed in .zip format.)
2) Install the keyboard layout by dragging it (the .keylayout and the .icns files, not their enclosing folder) to ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts.
3) To use a keyboard layout, activate it at System Preferences > International > Input Menu.