Typing Complex Burmese Script on Mac with UNICODE

Halo,

Please notice the terms: encoding, font and keyboard. UNICODE is an encoding, Myanmar Census is a font. I will use UNICODE fonts just to simplify the story.

Contents:

1. Preface
2. Getting UNICODE Burmese font and keyboard on Mac OS X.
3. Typing complex UNICODE Burmese script.
4. UNICODE Burmese keyboard map on Mac OS X.

1) Preface

1. There are 2 well-known Burmese fonts / encodings: Zawgyi and UNICODE. Locals used to use Zawgyi, but more and more people move to UNICODE. It is recommended to use UNICODE.
2. If a person is writing with UNICODE and your device is installed with Zawgyi, generally, you are unable to read the text (the scripts might be wrong, or some dotted circle appears).
3. UNICODE has several fonts, such as "Myanmar3" and "Myanmar Census" (recommended).
4. In most cases, if your friends have documents with "Zawgyi" while you use UNICODE, you still can read it by opening the file, select all text, and change the font to "Zawgyi" (you will need to install Zawgyi font first).
5. You can find more notes and keyboard layout on John Okell's "Burmese fonts guide 2016" Using Burmese fonts on a computer.

2) Steps to get UNICODE Burmese font and keyboard on Mac OS X

(Here is for Windows)

1. Adding from "System Preferences" > "Keyboard" > "Input Sources" > find "Myanmar - QWERTY"
2. Make sure to check the "Show Input menu in menu bar" box
3. When you want to use, choose the Myanmar keyboard from the menu bar

System Preferences

Choose the keyboard

3) Typing complex UNICODE Burmese script (option 1 = simple way) * (thanks to Stephen Spurlock's comment!)

1. Choose keyboard "Myanmar QWERTY"
2. To get က္လ [see Image 2.2]: press your keyboard on "k" and then "f" and then "l". 

3) Typing complex UNICODE Burmese script (option 2)

1. Make sure you have "Unicode Hex Input" keyboard added.
2. When you want to use it, hold "Option" on your keyboard, and type the number. For example you want to type က (1000) [see Image 2.1]: hold "Option", press "1", "0", "0", "0".
3. To get stacked consonant:
   (1) type the 'main' consonant, (2) hold " Option", press "1","0","3","9", (3) type the consonant at the bottom.
4. To get က္လ [see Image 2.2]:
   (1) hold " Option", press 1000, (2) hold " Option", press 1039, (3) hold " Option", press 101C.
5. You can download the list of unicode from these urls: Unicode U1000, and Myanmar uni v2

Image 2.1

Image 2.2

4) UNICODE Burmese keyboard map on Mac OS X (I map it myself but got the template from Apple Support)

Note:

To get င်္, for example for တနဂင်္နွေနေ့, instead of using SHIFT+z, 

type တနင် first + press f to get the င် up, then add ဂ = t + n + z + q + f + g

(12 Jun 2018)

Reference:

1. John Okell's "Burmese fonts guide 2016" Using Burmese fonts on a computer
2. Writing with unicode on mac
3. Burmese Keyboard Layout
4. mingalapar forum: how-to-install-myanmar-zawgyi-font-on-mac-os

List of Unicode:
1. http://www.utf8-chartable.de/unicode-utf8-table.pl?start=4096&number=128&utf8=string-literal
2. http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1000.pdf
3. http://unicode.org/notes/tn11/myanmar_uni-v2.pdf

Last modified: 05 Dec 2016

KR,

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