IPA phonetic alphabet font(s) for Mac?

[llamame]

I am sure that I have a font that shows all the IPA phonetic alphabet because this Wikipedia page on it works perfectly (and it's text, not an image). When I open Word documents or PowerPoint presentations sent from my Linguistics professor, however, the IPA symbols don't show up. Any ideas as to what existing fonts I can use in Word or what new (and free) fonts I can download in order to properly view these Word and PowerPoint documents? Thanks!

[Yuiichi]

Hah, interesting to find another Linguistics student here. How far advanced are you? I'm only first year, and I don't intend to keep going. Syntax and all that gives me headaches.

I did a quick google for IPA fonts, and I found a site here that claims to have fonts for the IPA. Also, this site seems to have a lot more information about different types of fonts. Worth a look at least.

Hope this helps!

[llamame]

Hi Yuiichi,
I'm in my first year too. It's interesting stuff but difficult at times. Anyways, I tried the first website a week ago and the fonts seem to be really old and don't work, even when I use them in word (they give me all rectangular outlines).

[llamame]

None of the suggested sites seem to have worked. I'm in Mac OS X 10.4.9. Anyone know how to get it working?

[appleberry]

somebody pls help! i'm currently a second year linguistics student, recently gotten a mac.. tried downloading the IPA font from IPA Palette i couldn't open the application because a dialog box pops up saying there's no application to open the file.. mind explaining?

thanks!

[Yuiichi]

@appleberry - try opening FontBook.app (in the Applications folder) and adding it via that. To do so, click File -> Add Font.

Hope this helps!

[lonnie]

Check the PDF file that is inside the dmg file - there is more that what I posted below. There's info on how to use it ect.

3 How Do I Install it?

You have a couple of options. If you want to make the Palette available
to you (and only you), you can copy IPAPalette.component to your home
~/Library/Components folder. You might have to create the Components folder
if it doesn't exist already. This is how I install IPA Palette on my own machines,
since I'm the only user:

/Users/moses/Library/Components/IPAPalette.component

If, however, you are a system administrator or primary user, you may wish to
make IPA Palette available to everybody. In that case, set it up like this:

/Library/Components/IPAPalette.component

Note: please do not instal l IPA Palette in /System/Library! Third-party
software has no business there, Only Apple software should live there.
When the IPA Palette method is installed, you may need to log out and log back
in to see the palette visible in the Keyboard (``flag") menu if you have it enabled.
If not, then try the ``System Preferences" application's ``International" pane,
and see if you can enable IPA Palette as one of the Input Menu items, as
illustrated in Figure 1.

[appleberry]

i've tried all d options you've suggested but i still can't open up the IPA pallete, in INTERNATIONAL, Microsoft Apps, etc, d IPA symbols don't seem to appear as i can't even open the IPA pallete App..
any other way?

[bsh]

@llamame -- The problem is probably that the MS Office apps on Mac are still running in the Carbon framework instead of the Cocoa space, and they do not have access to OS X's native font capabilities. This used to give me endless amounts of frustration because I couldn't use Apple Symbol in Word -- at all!

One day I finally switched to iWork '08, and I've been happy since.

As for the font(s) that have the IPA characters, I know that Helvetica, Lucida Grande, and Monaco have all or most of the IPA characters.

You might also want to switch to the Unicode keyboard layout (instead of the standard layout) to make composition, too... I can type, for instance, ƧƱʒƿ, without ever opening FontBook or the character palette, just by using keyboard combinations. That might work in the Office apps (haven't tried it).

Email me if you need more assistance -- macfreak (at) paXoo dot com. I'll be glad to help out.

[jphoto]

Charis SIL Font Home

Download the Charis font from the above site then add to System with the Font Book app.
Then go to "International" in System Preferences. Then under "Input Menu" check "Character Palette." A U.S. flag icon will appear in the desktop menu bar to the right. Select "Show Character Palette" from the pull-down menu under the flag icon and in the palette that pops up select 'All Characters" in the "View" menu. Under "Symbols" select "Phonetic Symbols" and drag a symbol to your document or select "Insert" at the bottom or double click the symbol you want. This works fine in Apple programs such as TextEdit. It won't work in older Word versions such as Office X. But seems to work fine in Office 2004.