I laid out $9.95 for the iPhone 3.0 update for my iPod Touch last night, and just discovered why it was worth it – the standard US Keyboard now allows you to insert the vowel-kahak? characters and ‘okina. Here’s how you do it:
When you want to type an ‘okina-vowel, touch and hold down your finger over the vowel for a second or two, and it will pop-up a list of available diacritic characters (see the graphic at right to see how this list looks when I held down over the letter “a” on the keyboard). Whether the vowel-macron is to the right or the left depends on which vowel you are trying to type.
For the ‘okina, press the “123” button to get to the keyboard with numbers and other characters. Hold down your finger on the apostrophe, and it will pop-up a list of curly quotes. Select the one that looks like a small number “6”.
That’s it! Another small step forward for Polynesian languages.
I should add for those that prefer the UK English keyboard, it seems to have the macron-vowels and correct character for the glottal as well.
So does this mean it will show up correctly on windows computers as well?..and how do we get it to show up corectly on emails etc with ppl that have windows computers (that?s a general question, not necc an iPhone questions)
Awesome news…gotta make inroads where we can…good information!!
Most current Windows installs (XP and Vista) can display the ‘okina and kahak? OK in Unicode. I created a Win keyboard that uses the same characters as we get in OS X and iPhone.
I need to talk to you some time about getting word out on some of these things. Seems like an awful lot of people who could benefit from these tools don’t know these things are available. Let’s chat later.
So cool! Thanks for letting us know yet another great iPhone trick.
Mahalo my bruddah!