Traditional GreekKeys FAQTraditional GreekKeys is a Macintosh-only product. GreekKeys-encoded fonts and Traditional GreekKeys keyboards are deprecated. They should not be used in creating any new document, and users should have a very strong reason to continue to use them in legacy documents. Some features of this old software will not work in some modern applications, and in some cases there is no workaround. Please use Unicode instead. This FAQ is still available since there may be users who still need these answers. ADDENDUM Fall 2019: with the release of macOS 10.15 (Catalina), 32-bit code no longer works. The Traditional GreekKeys keyboards are very old software using 32-bit technology and will no longer install under macOS 10.15. This should not present a problem since Traditional GreekKeys ceased being supported as of December 2005, and as of 2019 no one should be using it. All users should be taking advantage of Unicode fonts and Unicode keyboards. Installation questions:
Using GreekKeys with Microsoft Word or PowerPoint:
Using Traditional GreekKeys with Adobe PageMaker or Adobe InDesign: Printing problems and Problems with the appearance of Traditional GreekKeys fonts on screen:
Using Traditional GreekKeys fonts with browsers: Other:
For those who are just migrating from OS 9 to OS X.
Which Mac OS system versions are supported? The Traditional GreekKeys Universal keyboard resource (and the other localizations and versions of Traditional GreekKeys) may be used in recent pre-OS X versions of the Mac OS, in particular in OS 8.x or 9.x (the latest version is 9.2.2), and it may be used in the Classic environment on newer Macs that cannot be started in OS 9. The same file, with its name changed by the addition of the suffix ".rsrc", works in Mac OS 10.2 and later versions. An unsupported method of installation in OS 10.1.x was once available, but has been withdrawn: no one should any longer be using any version of OS X earlier than 10.2. How do I install the Greek Keys keyboard resource manually in OS 9 or Classic? If your computer is started up in OS 9, you may use the method that has applied ever since the days of OS 7: drag the icon of the appropriate version (for most users, Traditional GreekKeys Universal) over the icon of the System Folder and release the mouse button. A dialog should appear saying that this item needs to be stored in the System file, and you should answer OK. If your computer starts only in OS X, installation may be done manually in Panther (10.3) or later versions. In 10.3 and later, the Traditional GreekKeys keyboard resource (without the .rsrc suffix) is to be placed in the Appearance folder inside the System Folder. Installation in Classic under versions earlier than 10.3 is no longer supported. How do I activate the Greek Keys keyboard resource in OS 9 or Classic? In most cases, you also need to activate the keyboard. You can tell that activation has already occurred if you see the keyboard menu appear in the upper right of the menubar, between the clock and the application menu, and Traditional GreekKeys is present in that menu. If you don't see the keyboard menu there, then activate as follows.
How do I install and activate the keyboard resource manually for use in OS X version 10.2 or later? Traditional GreekKeys 2005 adn 2008 provide installers that do the job for you, but it is also possible to install manually. If you have a copy of the Traditional GreekKeys resource already, make a copy of it and change the name by adding the suffix ".rsrc" at the end of the name. For example, "Traditional GreekKeys Universal" should be renamed "Traditional GreekKeys Universal.rsrc". The files with .rsrc already added are provided in Traditional GreekKeys 2005, but in Traditional GreekKeys 2008 are embedded in the installer package. So if you have only Traditional GreekKeys 2008, you need to use the keyboard resources in the folder Deprecated OS9-Classic Keyboards and add the suffix .rsrc to their names. Open either the Keyboard Layouts folder in the top-level Library folder of your startup disk or partition (to make the input available to all users), or the Keyboard Layouts folder inside your home Library folder (to make it available to the active user only). NOTE: if there is no folder named "Keyboard Layouts" in home Library folder, then you should first create one and give it exactly that name, then proceed with the next step. Move the desired .rsrc file into the chosen Keyboard Layouts folder. Close the Keyboard Layouts folder, and then follow the following steps for ACTIVATION. How do I activate the keyboard resource for use in OS X version 10.2 or later? After installation of the .rsrc file into its chosen location, take the following steps to activate:
I installed Traditional GreekKeys Universal in OS X, but I can't type accented Greek in Word 98/2001. When you are working on a computer running OS X, you may be using both programs that are native to OS X (like Word X) and Classic programs that are native to Mac OS 9 (like Word 98 or Word 2001). The native programs require the OS X installation of Traditional GreekKeys keyboard, and the Classic programs require the OS 9 or Classic installation of Traditional GreekKeys keyboard. That is, you need to do TWO SEPARATE installations if you are going to work with programs of both types. How do I tell if installation was successful? Once any keyboard in addition to the system default has been checked, a keyboard menu will appear between the clock and the application menu at the right side of the menubar (or in 10.2 only, to the right of the Help menu of the OS X menu bar). The default US keyboard has a US flag icon. The Traditional GreekKeys keyboard has a Greek temple icon (except for some of the older versions named Traditional GreekKeys, which have a generic keyboard icon). If you see the keyboard menu and Traditional GreekKeys is visible in it, then installation worked. You can select keyboards with the mouse from the keyboard menu, or toggle between them with command-option-spacebar if you activated that command. What do I do if I believe I installed the keyboard, but can't type accented Greek properly? (1) If you are using a Classic application (like Word 2001) in the Classic environment of a machine running OS X, then you need to make sure the Traditional GreekKeys keyboard is installed in the Classic (OS 9) System. You may need to do two separate installations. See above. (2) Check whether the keyboard menu is visible in the menubar when you are running the application in which you want to type accented Greek. If it is there, hold the mouse button down with cursor over the keyboard menu to see whether Traditional GreekKeys is available. If it is and the problem is with a Classic application, try step (4); if it isn't available, go to (3). (3a) If the problem is in a Classic application, then while that application is running, open the Control Panel named Keyboard (Control Panels are accessible under the multi-colored Apple menu that shows when a Classic application is active). Scroll through the list and see whether Traditional GreekKeys Universal is in the list. If it is there and not checked, then check it. If it is not there, then it has not been successfully installed. (3b) If the problem is in an OS X application, then while that application is running, select System Preferences from the Dock or from the blue OS X Apple menu. Click on International and then on the Input Menu choice within International, and scroll through the list and see whether Traditional GreekKeys Universal is in the list. If it is there and not checked, then check it. If it is not there, then it has not been successfully installed. (4) Select Traditional GreekKeys in the keyboard menu. Then open KeyCaps (under the multi-colored Classic Apple menu) and select a Traditional GreekKeys font from the Font menu. Hold down the option key and you should see the various combinations of diacritics on the top row of keys in the picture of the keyboard. Click on one of them (with option held down), then release the option key and click on one of the vowels. If this works in KeyCaps, then it should work in other programs as well. I upgraded my OS software and now the Traditional GreekKeys keyboard is not available. Depending on what kind of upgrade you did, you may find that only the default keyboard is active after the upgrade or that Traditional GreekKeys needs to be reinstalled. For OS 9 or Classic, use the Control Panel named Keyboard to determine whether the Traditional GreekKeys keyboard is still present. If it is shown in the list, then you need to activate it. If it is not shown, then you have a "clean install" system and will need to reinstall Traditional GreekKeys (with the installer for OS 9 or Classic). For OS X, use the System Preferences to open International and then select Input Menu to determine whether the Traditional GreekKeys keyboard is still present. If it is shown in the list, then you need to activate it. If it is not shown, then you have a "clean install" system and will need to reinstall Traditional GreekKeys (with an installer for OS X). In OS X, incremental software updates with names like "MacOSXUpdate10.3.6" will not affect your Traditional GreekKeys installation. I want to get the file Traditional GreekKeys Universal out of the OS 9 (Classic) System file, but can't see it there when I open the System file. If your computer doesn't start in OS 9, you will not be able to open the Classic System file at all. But if you can start in OS 9, then double click on the file System inside the System Folder to open it. In the more recent Classic OS versions, active keyboards are made invisible to prevent their removal (which could corrupt the system or cause a crash). First you must turn the keyboard off in the Keyboard Control Panel. Once it is inactive, it will be visible in the System file window when the file is opened. I installed GreekKeys Unicode and/or Traditional GreekKeys Universal, activated them in the International Input Menu pane, but when I switch to a Traditional GreekKeys input and see the proper icon, what I type still comes out as ordinary English typing. By an OS X bug which crops up very rarely, it may happen that the synchronization between the icon displayed for the selected input in the Input Menu does not correspond to the input that is actually still being used by the system. As a result, you think you should be typing Greek, but you get normal roman characters instead. For a few users this bug has been very persistent, but in most cases I have heard of, the situation can be fixed. First, the quickest solution may be simply to restart your computer. Possibly when you restart, the system will have recovered its bearings about which input is active. Second, if that does not work, then the following steps in most cases will set things right again:
Third, anyone who is comfortable using the command-line in /Applications/Utilities/Terminal could aim for the same effect as the steps in the previous method by restoring the defaults (under which only one input is active) with the following command:
When I type omega with smooth and acute (option-6 followed by v) in a Greek font with Traditional GreekKeys Universal in Word 2004, I see a blank space, not the character. How does one fix this? Not only Word 2004, but now most OS X applications (10.3 and higher) always reserve the position that had been used for this combination for the non-breaking space character. To work around the problem, you must have the latest versions of Athenian, Attika, Kadmos, and Bosporos and enter omega with smooth and acute by typing the backslash key. How compatible with Word 2004 and Word 2008 are the Traditional GreekKeys fonts and keyboard? Compatibility has gradually become worse as OS X has advanced from 10.4 to 10.5 and to 10.6. You should not expect to be able to use Traditional GreekKeys effectively under 10.6 or higher versions of Mac OS X. Up through 10.4, old Word documents containing Athenian, Attika, Kadmos, or Bosporos fonts in GreekKeys encoding display the Greek in a form that is 99% intact. Three characters seem to give problems:
For the problems that cannot be worked around, there are two choices. (1) If you must continue to use documents with Kadmos or Bosporos, don't upgrade to Leopard from Tiger. (2) Use GreekKeysConverter to convert your old documents to Unicode Greek, and stop using Traditional GreekKeys. How compatible with Word X ("Word ten") are the Traditional GreekKeys fonts and keyboard? As long as you have installed Service Release 1 (June 2002) or purchased the product with SR 1 already incorporated, Word X behaves with Traditional GreekKeys more or less the same as earlier versions of Word. You can determine whether you have SR 1 by looking at the About Word screen (the first item under the Word menu when Word X is running). The first line will end in "Service Release 1" if it is already installed. If you do not have it, the site for obtaining this updater is http://www.microsoft.com/mac/download. This updater eliminates an intermittent problem that Word X (US version) had with entering accented characters correctly if the formatting palette or formatting toolbar was visible. On the issue of screen readability of the diacritics in Word X see below. Word X lacks Unicode support, which is available only in Word 2004 and 2008. I have updated to OS X, and the Greek in my existing Word documents no longer displays correctly. Most older (pre 2000-) versions of Athenian and Attika in the TrueType format contain faults that made no difference in OS 9 but do make a difference in OS X, causing Greek characters to be displayed incorrectly. Install the 2002 or 2004 versions of the TrueType fonts to solve this problem: Athenian is freely available for download, Attika is available only to purchasers of GreekKeys 2005 or 2008. An alternative solution is to use the PostScript versions instead, if you own them. The PostScript versions have not needed to be revised for this problem, but were revised in 2004 for the Word 2004 workaround for omega with smooth and acute. When I type Greek in Word (98 through 2004), funny substitutions of characters or even blank spaces appear instead of what I want. The default settings of Word 98 and subsequent versions, including Word X/2004/2008, activate a number of automatic features that are often a nuisance in general but are specifically incompatible with use of Traditional GreekKeys. Fortunately, you can turn these features off. (Smart quotes affects not only the apostrophe character but also iota with smooth and grave. For how to use smart quotes and not interfere with your Greek, see item below.)
When I type the masculine nominative singular article, it appears momentarily and then changes to a capital I. This is another autocorrect problem. Under the Tools menu select AutoCorrect... Scroll through the list of items and you will find an entry that automatically converts "i" into "I". Select this item and click on the Delete button. Then the article will stick as what you actually type. The rough breathing that goes with a capital vowel appears at the end of the line, with the vowel at the beginning of the next line. This problem arises from the fact that Traditional GreekKeys is a custom-encoding and Microsoft Word will not recognize the rough breathing character as being part of the same word as the capital letter that follows it, despite the fact that there is a space before the rough breathing character. The program's definition of a word has in mind standard roman fonts and takes no account of Traditional GreekKeys. The workaround is to catch this happening at some stage of proofing and to insert a manual line break (shift return) before the rough breathing sign. The downside of this is that if you change the font, edit the text nearby, or alter other aspects of layout, you may need to get rid of the manual page break later (and check again for new instances). (To keep better track of manual line breaks, you can make them visible by checking Paragraphs Marks in the View pane of Preferences.) The ultimate solution is Unicode Greek, where breathing plus capital is a single character and so cannot be split. I'd like to do a global replacement of one Traditional GreekKeys-encoded font with another in Word. Suppose you have a document containing a Traditional GreekKeys-encoded font that is displaying correctly in Word, but will not print on your printer. The first thing to check is whether you have the most up-to-date version of the font available. The second thing to check is that you do not have different versions (older and newer) of the same font in the various font folders of your Mac. If you have checked both those things, then you should try a global replacement of the troublesome font with a Traditional GreekKeys-encoded font that is working with your printer. Before starting, make a backup copy of the file you plan to work on, so you will still have the original version available if something goes wrong.
When you come back to the Find or Find and Replace window later for a search not related to global replacement of a font, you may need to click on the No Formatting button to clear the Format restriction. I'd like to use smart quotes in my Roman font, but I have to turn this option off to prevent trouble in Traditional GreekKeys. Smart quotes are the curving double and single quotes (and curving apostrophe) used in place of straight quotes. Straight quotes are a holdover from the typewriter, while smart quotes are the expected form in good typography. There are three approaches to take if you want to have smart quotes in your Roman font in Word. (1) You can type with straight quotes, and then do a global replacement when you are finished. First turn on smart quotes (AutoCorrect.../AutoFormat panel). Then in the replace dialogue, click on the More button so that the format button is shown. For both the Find what and Replace with fields, enter the same single or double straight quote in each, but also for each click on the Format button and select font, then choose the Roman font you have used. When you click on Replace All, all apostrophes or quote marks in Roman font should be changed to the curved form, but the apostrophes in your Greek should not be corrupted. (If you don't specify the font, then your Greek apostrophes turn to omega with subscript, smooth, and acute.) (2) Create a keyboard command: select Customize... under the Tools menu, and press the Keyboard button. In the new panel, select AllCommands in the Categories window, and then scroll in the Commands window to ToolsAutoCorrectSmartQuotes and then assign a command to it (such as command-9). This command will then toggle smart quotes on and off. (3) Create one macro that selects your favorite Greek font and turns off smart quotes and another that selects your favorite Roman font and turns smart quotes on. Then assign keyboard commands to the two macros. Here is a listing of such a macro, with Bosporos-Sparta and Times as the chosen fonts. You may copy this into the macro editor window, change the names of the two fonts to those you wish to use, and then assign keyboard shortcuts to each macro.
Sub GreekPlainQuotes()
Sub TimesSmartQuotes() In PowerPoint X the Greek is messed up (odd spacing, characters out of order). This problem sometimes arises for some sizes of PostScript fonts (such as Kadmos) when "Quartz font smoothing" is enabled. It probably does not occur if you have upgraded to OS X 10.2.x. If the problem does appear, you can disable this option by unchecking "Enable Quartz font smoothing" in the View pane of PowerPoint Preferences (select this under the PowerPoint menu when the program is the active one). This solution, however, may produce unacceptably jagged roman characters. The alternative solution is to leave Quartz font smoothing enabled, but to use TrueType Athenian font instead of a PostScript font. In PowerPoint I am having trouble with bullets and epsilon with rough breathing. Traditional GreekKeys encodes epsilon with rough in the same ascii position as Roman fonts use for the bullet symbol, which is used extensively in Microsoft PowerPoint. This may lead to trouble in the display of these characters in certain situations. If you have the up-to-date TrueType versions of Athenian or Attika or any of the PostScript fonts, then the problem may arise if the first word of a bulleted line is in Greek font: the bullet will appear as epsilon with rough. To eliminate this problem, there are two choices. (1) Insert a space before the first letter of the text; select this space and change the font of this space to a Roman font. The bullet adopts the font of the first character of the line, so the bullet will appear correctly. (2) Select the setting "None" for bullets on the Bullets and Numbering section of the Formatting Palette. If you have an older version of TrueType Athenian or Attika, the symptoms may be different. What problems do Traditional GreekKeys fonts have in page layout programs and what are the workarounds? There are two main incompatibilities that can be worked around.
There is also a problem that can't be worked around. Traditional GreekKeys fonts are available only in regular style, and there are no separate versions for bold and italic styles. InDesign insists on such additional fonts if you want to use those styles. If you import bold or italic styles from Word, InDesign will display the words as regular instead. If you try to apply bold or italic within InDesign, nothing will happen. Unfortunately, there are no plans to create other styles of the Traditional GreekKeys fonts, since they are now deprecated. The Greek font looks bad or is poorly spaced in Word X SR 1. If this problem appears, disable (uncheck, turn off) the setting "Enable Quartz font smoothing" on the General pane of the Word X Preferences (which you open by selecting Preferences... under the Word menu while a Word document is open). If this option is enabled, then there will sometimes be oddities in the appearance of PostScript Greek fonts (poor legibility, odd spacing, poor matching of insertion point to the position of the insertion i-beam). When this option is disabled, the display should be normal. Since this does not occur in TextEdit with the PostScript fonts, it seems to be a problem with Word X and not with the fonts. The problem seems to have been cured for those who have upgraded to OS X 10.2.x.
Why do my PostScript Traditional GreekKeys fonts look different (fuzzy, funny) in OS X? OS X graphics engine (Quartz) is based on Adobe Portable Document format (relying on PostScript), so when a PostScript font is used, instead of using the bitmapped screen font, as Classic applications do, OS X applications use the PostScript printer font to render on the screen. So whereas you previously saw a special font designed for screen viewing, now you see a screen rendering of the very fine font intended for the high resolution of a PostScript printer. In addition, Adobe and Apple are crazy about anti-aliasing (also called font smoothing), which is a modification of the boundary of characters that is supposed to make them more handsome and readable. Unfortunately, when anti-aliasing is applied to fonts below a certain point size, they may become less readable (this is why some PDF documents look muddy on the screen but print beautifully). To avoid anti-aliasing ugliness or barely legible diacritics in small point sizes, you can turn anti-aliasing off for selected sizes. In the Classic OS, the Appearance Control Panel has a font panel where you can turn off anti-aliasing for the screen below 12, 14, 18, or 24 points. In OS X this setting is in the General pane of the System Preferences, but OS X sets 12 point as the maximum size for turning off anti-aliasing, an unfortunate limitation (in addition, it seems that Word X misinterprets this setting to mean that smoothing should begin at 12 point size, not above 12 point). One way around the fuzziness (which can be a serious hindrance with accents and breathings) is to increase the magnification of your display within your application (to 125% or 150%), although that choice may also be inconvenient at times. If you have Word X with SR1, then there is another setting you may need to disable: Select Preferences... under the Word menu, select the "General" pane in the choices listed at left, and experiment with unchecking the last item on the list, "Enable Quartz text smoothing." Another possible workaround for unclear font display is to use (at your own risk; this product is not related to Traditional GreekKeys and is not official Apple software) the freeware System Preference TinkerTools (download at http://www.bresink.de/products.html) to allow different settings for preventing font smoothing. When this is installed, it appears as a new choice in System Preferences. When you open it, choose the tab for Font Smoothing: users report that they have success with the first checkbox unchecked and the next two checked and with the number 18 entered in all the boxes for point size (or else 14 in the two upper boxes and 18 in the lowest). While this may fix the display in Word X, these high settings may be less compatible with Adobe Photoshop 7 and TextEdit. Underdots are not showing up on the screen when I use Kadmos. Because of the placement of underdots in Kadmos font, some or all of the underdots may disappear on the screen in Word X, depending on the line spacing and the degree of magnification. This does not occur if the line spacing is 1.5 or 2 instead of single space, and it does not occur in Athenian, Attika, or Bosporos fonts. Some Kadmos users report that the problem goes away if they use TinkerTools with the settings mentioned in the previous paragraph. I see correct Greek on the screen, but when I print the Greek characters are scrambled.
If you don't have the 2002 or 2004 versions of theTrueType fonts, this will happen in OS X applications on any kind of printer. For laser printers and some inkjet printers, the latest versions of Athenian and Attika solve this problem. Some existing documents containing Traditional GreekKeys Greek always or sometimes fail to print. Problems of this kind have been reported by two users with the HP 1200 Laser Printer. There is probably some inadequacy in the printer driver. As far as can be determined, such failures do not occur with more expensive HP Laser Printers (e.g. 2200, 4000 series). How can I get my web browser to display Traditional GreekKeys fonts? If you have a modern computer, OS, and browser, the preferred solution is to use a Unicode font wherever Unicode is offered as a choice by the web site. If you must use a Traditional GreekKeys-encoded font, the TrueType font Athenian has been made available for free download for Mac or Windows. The download is on this site. In general, on the Windows platform it is necessary to use Internet Explorer. For more information on which browsers work with Traditional GreekKeys Athenian and how to adjust the settings if Athenian is not working without intervention, see the browser instructions page of Donald Mastronarde's Ancient Greek Tutorials web site. What fonts are available with the Traditional GreekKeys encoding? In the 1980s, the bitmap fonts Sparta and Salamis (and Sparta+ and Salamis+) were distributed with the early versions of Traditional GreekKeys. These fonts are now obsolete and not supported. If you have documents containing these fonts, open them in a Classic application or on an OS 9 Mac and do a global replacement with a new font such as Athenian or Attika. In the 90s the Traditional GreekKeys fonts provided with the package were Athenian and Attika. These fonts are still in use today, with a 2004 revision. Allotype Typographics (Marc Cogan) produced and sold good Type1 PostScript fonts, Kadmos and Bosporos, until recently. Allotype is no longer in business, but donation of the fonts to the APA was completed in December 2004. Updated versions of the Traditional GreekKeys-encoded Kadmos and Bosporos are part of GreekKeys 2008, but more important, the glyphs from these fonts have formed the basis of a Unicode-encoded versions with additional characters, also part of GreekKeys 2008. Is it possible to convert to and from Traditional GreekKeys and Greek fonts with different encodings, such as Unicode or SGreek? The recommended solution is GreekKeysConverter, by Lucius Hartmann. See the conversion page. Why is there odd enlarged line-spacing when I use Bosporos or Kadmos is some OS X programs? This has been found to occur for some users with Kadmos and Bosporos postscript fonts (from Allotype Typographics; not Traditional GreekKeys products) in TextEdit, Mellel, and NisusWriter Express. For some reason, these programs (which are apparently drawing upon the same aspect of the system-level text engine) change their interpretation of single-spacing as soon as the font is changed to one of these. Only Mellel is able to recover from this error, since it is possible to restate the line-spacing in the paragraph format palette by giving a measure in points (such as 14 or 15) rather than in lines. It is unclear whether this is something that could be fixed within the fonts or is some kind of bug in the OS. It does not occur, fortunately, in Word 2004. UPDATE (Dec. 2004): these fonts now belong to the APA; the spacing problem does not occur in the new versions that are intended as workarounds for another problem. Does Traditional GreekKeys work with NisusWriter Express and Mellel word-processors? Traditional GreekKeys input works in both of these word-processors. In Mellel, for the input to work correctly for all diacritics, it is necessary to define a separate character style in which your chosen Greek font is the primary font. This style will then appear under the Character menu, and you can also assign a keyboard shortcut to it (under Edit Character Styles...) so that you can switch between typing in your Roman font and typing in Greek with simple keyboard commands like command-1 and command-5. If your chosen Greek font is Kadmos or Bosporos, then you should also redefine the line-spacing in your regular paragraph style (to say, 14 or 15 points, instead of 1 line, if you want single-spacing). In Mellel one can make a global font replacement, if necessary, using the Replace Styles command. NisusWriter Express, in the early releases, was not yet equipped for global font changes or even searching for a particular font. I have not checked version 2 of NisusWriter Express. Can Traditional GreekKeys be used if I still use WordPerfect for Mac? WordPerfect for Mac is no longer supported. How can I get help if I've read the User's Guide and consulted this web site and still have a problem? Traditional GreekKeys is no longer supported. You should convert to Unicode. About migrating from OS 9 to OS X. The migration from OS 9 to OS X has been going on for a number of years. At this point (fall 2005) users should not hesitate to make the transition to OS X, since the major applications have all migrated and since use of Unicode is now practical. For security and support reasons, some institutions are beginning to desupport or forbid OS 9 on their networks. Version 10.1 in Fall 2001 provided the first version stable and complete enough to perform most of the tasks for which people like to use Macs, but was not well equipped for Traditional GreekKeys (which could be installed only by a hack). The release of 10.2 in August 2002 added many improvements, including a supported method of installing specialized keyboard input schemes like Traditional GreekKeys. 10.3 in Fall of 2003 and 10.4 forthcoming in 2005 add even more modern features. For a time, new Macs could be started, by the choice of the user, either in OS 9 or OS X. Now all new Macs start in OS X only. With a new Mac, you can still run OS 9-applications within the Classic environment, and for Traditional GreekKeys users there is reason to retain an OS 9 version of Word even after upgrading, to make sure you can deal adequately with older documents (for instance, if you have Salamis or Sparta fonts in your old documents, you will need to use the Classic version of Word to replace these fonts with a more modern Traditional GreekKeys font, after which you will be able to use the documents in OS X. If you are used to working in OS 9, find your computing environment sufficiently stable and efficient, and have a lot invested in Classic applications, it may well be easier for you to stick with OS 9 as long as your old computer hangs on. Gradually, however, upgraded applications will come to work in OS X only. OS X has some distinct advantages in stability and, especially in 10.2 and later, in configuration of networking and printing for many setups. Newer peripheral devices may also induce or force you to start using OS X. But there are some differences to get used to, and OS X is in some ways more complex and difficult that OS 9. In the longer term, however, if you like using Macs, you'll eventually need to make the switch and learn to use OS X. They are still easier to work with than Windows computers. What major changes do I have to get used to when I switch to OS X?
What is the difference between running the Classic environment and running OS 9? On older computers you have the choice of starting the computer in either system, if they have both been installed. If you start in OS 9, OS X is inactive and unavailable, and OS X-native applications and services are unavailable. Almost everything will then look and behave as you have been used to seeing it in OS 8/9. If you start in OS X, then you can also launch OS 9 from within OS X as the Classic environment. In the latter case, most older programs will run in the Classic environment, and the interface for these applications will look traditional (note the traditional appearance of the menubar and the multi-colored Apple icon of the Apple menu). OS X-native applications will run in the new environment, and the interface will have the new "aqua" look (note the different appearance of the menubar and the blue Apple icon of the Apple menu). More recent Macs cannot start in OS 9 at all. You can use OS 9 applications only in the Classic environment. If the Classic environment is not available on a new Mac, you can install it using the CD "Additional Software and Apple Hardware Test" that came with your system. Can I keep using Traditional GreekKeys on a new Mac or a Mac that is upgraded to OS X? Yes, but if you are using both OS X-native and Classic applications, you will need to do a double installation of the keyboard, once for OS 9/Classic and once for OS X. See above on installation. How do I start in OS 9 or OS X (if there is a choice)? On the older computers capable of starting in either system, if you have started in OS X and want to restart in OS 9, then (after saving work and quitting other applications) select System Preferences from the Dock or from the (OS X) Apple Menu and click on Startup. Select the OS 9 System Folder, and then click on Restart. If you have started in OS 9 and want to restart in OS X, then (after saving work and quitting other applications) select Control Panels under the Apple Menu and open Startup Disk. Select the OS X System, and then click on Restart. What happens when I run Software Update or install updates? The updater that changes OS 9.2.1 to 9.2.2 leaves the Traditional GreekKeys keyboard in place and active, but turns off the keyboard toggle command. To restore this command, open the Keyboard Control Panel and click on Options and check the box. The incremental Software Updates within the series 10.2.x and higher do not affect the Traditional GreekKeys keyboard if it was already installed. Installation of a major upgrade, as from 10.2 to 10.3 or 10.3 to 10.4 may require reinstallation of Traditional GreekKeys for OS X, depending on what kind of installation you did for Traditional GreekKeys and which options you select in the OS X upgrade. |
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