Te Kete o Karaitiana Taiuru (Blog)

macrons on iPhone

I am investigating how to create macrons the iPhone.  I must admit to feeling like i have gone back 13 and more years in my career to the days when i worked on macron technology for web sites and the PC. Thankfully a task that is now simple and requires little cognition.
Like the old days ASCII Umlauts are available by default on the iPhone but not true macrons using Unicode.
If you still use umlauts or type in Māori et al on your iPhone and need some distinction for a macron:
To display an umlaut hold the vowel key down. You will then be presented with several special characters. Slide your finger to the umlaut vowel you require.
Installing a Macintosh locale such as Hawai’i would give us macrons. There is also the Estonian language (?) which also has macrons but on a standard US iPhone keyboard i can not get it to work.
Ideally a custom keyboard layout with a 5th row of macrons.
In the meantime if you know of a solution to include macrons on the iPhone (or BlackBerry) or perhaps you are a developer that wants to give your time to this good cause that will allow Pacific peoples to type their language on the iPhone, please email me.

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DISCLAIMER: This post is the personal opinion of Dr Karaitiana Taiuru and is not reflective of the opinions of any organisation that Dr Karaitiana Taiuru is a member of or associates with, unless explicitly stated otherwise.

9 responses to “macrons on iPhone”

  1. Keola Avatar
    Keola

    The Latvian keyboard in my iPod Touch has macrons over all vowels except “o”. Argh! So close yet so far.

  2. Keola Avatar
    Keola

    The Latvian keyboard in my iPod Touch has macrons over all vowels except “o”. Argh! So close yet so far.

  3. Keola Avatar
    Keola

    Also, while there is a Hawaiian locale in the iPhone, it doesn’t include a keyboard. If you select the Hawaiian locale it will show date and time strings in Hawaiian, but that’s about it. This was because of the support we got in OS X back in 2002 – it found its way into the iPhone OS. Wish the keyboard made it as well, but no such luck.

  4. Keola Avatar
    Keola

    Also, while there is a Hawaiian locale in the iPhone, it doesn’t include a keyboard. If you select the Hawaiian locale it will show date and time strings in Hawaiian, but that’s about it. This was because of the support we got in OS X back in 2002 – it found its way into the iPhone OS. Wish the keyboard made it as well, but no such luck.

  5. Keola Avatar
    Keola

    Āēīöū frpm my iPod Touch

  6. Keola Avatar
    Keola

    Āēīöū frpm my iPod Touch

  7. Karaitiana Avatar
    Karaitiana

    Aloha, i noticed that with all of my international keyboards. Very frustrating. Hopefully this issue will be rectified with the new update due later this month.

  8. Karaitiana Avatar
    Karaitiana

    Aloha, i noticed that with all of my international keyboards. Very frustrating. Hopefully this issue will be rectified with the new update due later this month.

  9. David Knapp Avatar

    If anyone’s still interested, in iOS 5:
    1. select Settings>General>International>International Keyboards>English
    2. then touch the “>” to the right of “English”, and select Hardware Keyboard>US Extended
    Ōkāy nōw, rīght?

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