need help with Tamil unicode fonts in Macbook OSX 10.6.7

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Level 1

6 points

need help with Tamil unicode fonts in Macbook OSX 10.6.7

I am really desperate for some help figuring out my Tamil unicode font problem. With great difficulty I got all these fonts set up on my previous ibook G4. When that computer died in the fall I got this new Macbook, and had all my data brought from the old computer to the new one. Fonts were working great, as before. Well recently I had a hard drive failure on my new Macbook (OSX 10.6.7). I now have a new hard drive, and I brought over all my data from an external hard drive using Time Machine. Everything appeared to be working great....except the Tamil fonts. Previously I was using Murasu Anjal unicode font which allowed me to type in Tamil font and view Tamil on webpages, no problem. I understand that Snow Leopard has Tamil font support (including Anjal), so I am confused as to why they were working before but are not working now-especially because on my husband's Macbook Pro (OSX 10.6.5) you can see Tamil fonts on webpages and he has no special Tamil font installed whatsoever. For me the only thing visible is boxes. I am in the midst of finishing up a dissertation which is really dependent on being able to read and write in Tamil fonts. I am desperate to get this fixed but just cannot seem to figure it out. I would greatly appreciate any help or advice!!! Thanks so much!!!

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on May 1, 2011 7:31 AM

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Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

116,054 points

Feb 10, 2016 6:51 AM in response to SUN.ANNAMALAI

SUN.ANNAMALAI wrote:

I read all your posts.

But you seem to have missed the one up 6 or so in this discussion where I wrote: "MS Word for Mac has never supported any Indic script, and I don't think there is any point trying to make it work. You can use any other app you want, including TextEdit, Pages, OpenOffice, etc."

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Answer 2

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

116,054 points

May 1, 2011 8:36 AM in response to indophile

OS X comes equipped to read and write Unicode Tamil out of the box, there is no need to install anything. The name of the font is InaiMathi. If you have that in your font list, then you can read any Unicode Tamil. For typing Unicode Tamil, you go to system prefs/language & text/input sources and check the box for the Anjal or Tamil99 Input Method, plus the box for Show Input Menu in Menu Bar. Then you select one of those from the "flag" menu at the top right of the screen and type.

If you are missing the InaiMathi font, email me and I will send you a copy (tom at bluesky dot org).

If you are trying to read non-Unicode Tamil webpages, use the Firefox browser with the Padma extension.

If you have been downloading the Murasu Anjal stuff from the internet and using it instead of what Apple provides, I don't know anything about that, except that I think versions earlier than 10 are not Unicode and I would not recommend them.

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Answer 3

indophile Author

Level 1

6 points

Jun 21, 2011 12:55 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Hi again--

Thanks so much for the great help earlier last month regarding Tamil fonts on my Mac. Now that I installed the Inaimathi font, it is working great--at least on Mozilla Firefox. Strangely, that's the only place where I can type in Tamil or read Tamil on this Mac--when I do internet searches. Formerly, I was able to type in Tamil in Pages or in NeoOffice, but no more. I must be missing another of the necessary fonts. Any advice or help would be most appreciated, as always. Thank you!

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Answer 4

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

116,054 points

Jun 21, 2011 2:04 PM in response to indophile

indophile wrote:

I must be missing another of the necessary fonts.

There is no font other than Inaimathi for what you want to do. Which of the Tamil keyboard layouts in System Preferences/Language & Text/Input Sources are you using when you type -- Anjal or Tamil99? What appears in Pages or NeoOffice when you type asdfg? How about TextEdit?

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Answer 5

indophile Author

Level 1

6 points

Jun 21, 2011 4:03 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

I've always used the Anjal keyboard with no problem...at least there was no problem before my MacBook hard drive had to be replaced, with a newer operating system, as I had mentioned previously. When I type in Pages, NeoOffice or TextEdit, the results are the same. Many of the characters show up, but vowel combinations--especially the "o" or "u" vowels--show up incorrectly or are unintelligible. Strangely, typing in Tamil font (using Anjal keyboard) in internet searches works perfectly, but ONLY in Firefox (?) NOT in the Safari browser. Prior to re-installing the InaiMathi font, which had seemingly vanished with the transfer of my data to the new hard drive, I was unable to type Tamil anywhere, not even in Firefox. Now it works only in Firefox. For example, if I were to type in Tamil in this window, it works fine: தமிழ் நாடு.

Being able to do Tamil searches in Firefox as I had previously is really a major boon for me, but of course I'd love to be able to produce Tamil text, especially as I am about to embark on a 6 month research jaunt to South Asia.

Many thanks for all your help thus far, and for any further advice you might have.

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Answer 6

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

116,054 points

Jun 21, 2011 4:34 PM in response to indophile

indophile wrote:

When I type in Pages, NeoOffice or TextEdit, the results are the same. Many of the characters show up, but vowel combinations--especially the "o" or "u" vowels--show up incorrectly or are unintelligible.

This sounds like you could have a Windows Tamil font on your machine which is conflicting. Windows fonts cannot be used for Tamil on a Mac. Go to Character Viewer (Edit > Special Characters), view = code tables, tab = unicode, range = 00000B80 Tamil, select a character, and look in the Font Variation pane. Any font other than the InaiMathi Regular from Apple should be removed.

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Answer 7

indophile Author

Level 1

6 points

Jun 21, 2011 6:22 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Wow...I never knew the character viewer existed! I suspect that you are right about my having some non-Macintosh compatible fonts on my computer. I did what you instructed, and found that there are a number of empty boxes in the Tamil Unicode section. There are also a number of Tamil characters that appear, and when I look at them in the Font Variation pane, it says they are Code2000, not Inaimathi. Should I delete these? I want to make sure I'm not deleting the wrong characters. And how exactly do I remove them? When I press delete nothing happens.

THANK YOU!

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Answer 8

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

116,054 points

Jun 22, 2011 2:40 AM in response to indophile

indophile wrote:

when I look at them in the Font Variation pane, it says they are Code2000, not Inaimathi. Should I delete these?

You need to get rid of the font Code2000. You should be able to find it in Home/Library/Fonts and drag it to the trash. Or it might be in Library/Fonts.

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Answer 9

indophile Author

Level 1

6 points

Jun 23, 2011 3:47 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

I have purged all the fonts that seemed suspect--leaving only IndUni and Inaimathi--and my Tamil fonts are working PERFECTLY again! Amazing. Thank you SO much again for all your help. Without your advice I would have never gotten this fixed. THANK YOU!

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Answer 10

deZine9

Level 1

0 points

Oct 23, 2012 4:36 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Hi Tom

I have seen your excellent posts on questions relating to Tamil Fonts and so thought of asking your help.

I am using a MacBook Air, OS X 10.7.4 and I would like to know how I can read / write in Tamil. I had seen several posts in the past and but not specifically for MacBook Air..any help is much appreciated. thanks.

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Answer 11

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

116,054 points

Oct 23, 2012 4:46 PM in response to deZine9

deZine9 wrote:

I would like to know how I can read / write in Tamil.

Read: That should work automatically without your doing anything special. For example, go to

http://www.tn.gov.in/tamiltngov/index.html

Write: Go to system preferences/language & text/input sources and check the boxes for Tamil, plus the box for Show Input Menu in Menu Bar, plus the box for Keyboard Viewer. Then select Tamil in the "flag" menu at the top right of the screen and type. Select keyboard viewer from the same menu to see which key does what.

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Answer 12

vaira123

Level 1

0 points

May 11, 2013 1:32 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Hi Tom,

I guess this thread is old, but i dont want to open a new thread for a same problem. But i could find a solution.

I have Macbook Pro 10.8.3. I assume as you said it comes with tamil fonts by default. But this is what i get. Please look at the images, i have attached from all 3 browsers - chrome, ff, safari.

http://imageshack.us/g/189/73074317.png/

Thanks in advance.

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