[KS] Getting Hanja in Mac IME

[Frank Hoffmann]

Hi Maja:

I fear you have to switch to a Chinese input system then.  
The inofficial Taiwanese standard, "Big Five" (also "Big-5" or "GB5" or 
"BIG5"), includes 13,051 characters. However, MacOS (version 10.3 and 
up) now has "BIG-5E" available--"BIG-5E" is the 1984 "Big Five" plus 
another added 3,954 hanja/hanzi, over 17,000 characters therefore. Just 
use the fonts LiHei 儷黑 Pro or LiSong 儷宋 Pro (not sure what other 
fonts may include all characters) and choose a Chinese input method, 
e.g. "Pinyin  Traditional" or whatever you feel comfortable with. 
Actually, I think on a Mac, whatever font you have chosen, when you use 
the correct input method your Mac will automatically choose a font that 
has the character, if such a Unicode font in present on your system. 
Detailed info at this Yale site: 
http://www.yale.edu/chinesemac/pages/osx7.html

You'll find all the character sets for South and North Korea, mainland 
China, Taiwan, and Japan here:
http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/ISO-IR/2-4.htm
The South Korean one includes only 8224 combinations, of which only 
4888 are hanja (others are han'gŭl syllables, etc.). Of these 4888 
there are actually 268 duplicates, because of multiples readings (of 
the same characters), so that actually there are only 4620 different 
characters included in the South Korean standard set. The North Korean 
standard has even 235 fewer hanja, but compensates that with some cute 
hammer, sickle, and brush symbols and others. (But the Unicode 
Consortium refused in 2000 to include these in the Universal Character 
Set, so that you won't have these available in any practical sense on 
e.g. a standard Mac OS.) 

In theory, you can also input the codes directly, using the "Unicode 
Hex Input" method (see below):
  System Preferences --> Language & Text --> Input Sources --> enable 
"Unicode Hex Input"
Now, choose/activate "Unicode Hex Input" (as you would switch between 
e.g. "U.S. Extended" and "2-Set-Korean" (upper right of your screen), 
hold down the OPTION key ⌥ and try entering any 4-digit combination, 
e.g.:
Option + 2325 ==> ⌥  (yes, the option key symbol)
Option + 8846 ==> 衆 

Option + 262D ==> ☭  (hammer and sickle)

However, using a Chinese input method seems the only non-technical 
practical method:

Best,
Frank


On Wed, 29 Aug 2012 11:11:57 +0900, Maya Stiller wrote:
> Dear list members,
> 
> The list of hanja characters is not very extensive though, especially
> when it comes to typing pre-modern Korean poetry and prose. To enter a
> rare hanja, I would search for it on naver's hanja dictionary, but
> sometimes even that does not work. Is there a way to extend the hanja
> list? Is there something like an IME-handwriting that would allow me
> to insert hand-written characters into the Word document?
> 
> Maya Stiller
> Buddhist Studies graduate student, UCLA

--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws