For OS 10.4.11 and later, keyboard software must be of the type ".keylayout", and most fonts must also be upgraded. Earlier keyboards will not work -- attempting to install them may crash the system. Check with us for upgrades, which are rapidly being added.

To install fonts for OS 10.2 and later, you drag fonts into the Fonts folder inside a Library folder. You may have to drag out the older fonts before you do this, one will not replace the other.
Be sure to shut down your word processor or other application before you do this, and to restart it again afterwards. You can save a copy of your document files that you are working with, just so you are sure they remain OK, not because of any need for our upgrades..

For installing software keyboards into a Keyboard Layouts folder for OS 10.4.11 or later, you will need to shut down the entire computer after installation, before starting it again. Additional details follow below on keyboard layout software, then on older systems. To be able to use keyboard software, you must go through three steps.

The icons for the keyboard software should normally appear as an upright (portrait) sheet of blank paper with a tiny corner folded. If you make a mistake, attempting to open this kind of plain text file and save it, it may have another icon, perhaps a dark grey one -- if so, put that changed file in the trash, and start fresh from the file we have sent you.

In the Apple menu, go to System Preferences, click on the "International" icon. (Or from the "Flag" menu at the upper right, click on "Open International" if that choice is visible.) Choose the tab labeled "Input Menu". Place check marks next to the software keyboards which you wish to have available for use.
Depending on the Operating System version number (OS 10.2 to 10.6.3...) and perhaps on your choices when you installed your OS, you may see lots of options, and on some OS special ones may come first not in alphabetical order: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Thai, Arabic, Iranian, Hebrew.
The keyboards we supply will not be among the special lists just named, rather they will be among European and Roman keyboards, and Unicode keyboards. They may even come among the last of the lists of keyboards. You may have to look there to find them.

You may also want to install and activate the software keyboards "US Extended" and "Unicode Hex Input" provided by Apple on your operating system installation disks. In the System Preferences > International > Input Methods list, they may be at the beginning. The first of these "US Extended" allows many accented characters. To use the second "Unicode Hex Input", you hold down the option key while touching a sequence of four keys in order to create a hexadecimal code, keys chosen from (0, 1, ... 9, a, b, c, d, e, f).

Once you have made keyboard software available in this way, going back to the "International" "Input Menu", you will see the names of these possibilities shown with a check mark.

Installed keyboard software which you have made available as indicated just above in step 2 should show up in the "flag" menu in your menu bar. Our keyboard software does not come with special icons, so only a default icon of a tiny keyboard will appear there. This is normal. In that "flag" menu, many people will prefer to click on "Show Input Source Name" so that they have names next to the icons to distinguish the software keyboards.

Click on the keyboard you wish to use, and that keyboard will become active if it is compatible with the font in the document you are working on. (If it is greyed out, Apple's operating system or the application is assuming the context is not right for the intended use. Either choose again a font intended for Unicode, or choose application software which supports Unicode, and then attempt in the "flag" menu to choose the keyboard again.)

You can also use Command-Spacebar to rotate between software keyboards of different scripts (writing systems), or Command-Option-Spacebar to rotate between software keyboards within a script (writing system). And you can change this default.

With a few of our keyboards, even our newest ones for Unicode fonts, you need also to turn on the CapsLock key in order to achieve the special functionality required for a particular alphabet.

OS 10.2+ will accept keyboard software (Ecological Linguistics versions 7.1 to 7.8), if you append to the keyboard file name the suffix “.rsrc” (without the quotes). In other cases we have designed new keyboard software to permit continued use of (upgraded) older fonts in OS 10.2+. But this version will not work past 10.4 etc.

Some of our keyboard software for non-Unicode fonts originally in our versions 7.1 to 7.8, will appear alphabetically by name among the keyboard input software items for various countries using the Roman alphabet.

Use either TrueType or Postscript fonts, but do not try to install both versions of the same font (the computer will face a conflict). With some software (Adobe Illustrator, ATM, and similar), only Postscript is usable. With some printers which do not support Postscript, only TrueType is usable. OpenType versions will be available later.

Starting with OS 10.2, TrueType is preferred, and is likely to have fewer difficulties. You can install the fonts in different Fonts folders inside different Libraries, depending on whether you want them accessible to all users, or only to particular users who log on with their passwords to access them. You can use the Fonts folder inside the main Library folder. Or inside the folder USERS, go into your Home folder (icon of a house), then into the Libraries folder, then into the Fonts folder.

Drag the individual font files (not the folders) onto the closed icon of the System Folder. If you do this correctly, you will see a screen message that Fonts need to be installed in the Fonts folder, and asking if you wish to proceed. Click OK to install. If you do not see such a screen message, you are almost certainly not installing the software. It is better to let the computer install the fonts in this way, rather than yourself to place the fonts directly into the Fonts folder. (To replace fonts with newer versions, or to remove fonts, you must close all application software, and then manually drag the font files out of the Fonts folder, into the trash, or into a folder on your desktop where you keep backup copies for safety.)

First close all application software. You drag the individual software keyboard file (not a folder) onto the closed icon of the System Folder. If you do this correctly, you will see a screen message that keyboard software needs to be installed in the System file, and asking if you wish to proceed. Click OK to install. If you do not see such a screen message, you are almost certainly not installing the software. You must also activate the keyboard software, see below. (Do not use keyboard software versions earlier than 7.1. Do not use version 7.0.1. If you need an upgrade, it is $20.)

After the keyboard software is installed, you can activate it by going into the control panel, “keyboard” module. Click on the name of the keyboard to turn it black, then close. Then if your paper keyboard diagram is called a "CapsLock keyboard", activate your CapsLock key, and use that diagram and instructions for keying.