Avoid the Input Menu's US flag in the menubar

May 27, '04 08:51:00AM

Contributed by: ekc

Non-Americans using the Input Menu are often irritated by the US flag in the menu bar. Unfortunately, if you use the default keyboard that came with your Mac, chances are you must use the US keyboard layout (e.g. I live in Canada, but the "Canada - CSA" layout will not work for me unless I switch keyboards, which is a little hard to do on a PowerBook!).

In 10.3.x, however, I discovered a way around this. In the Input Menu configuration panel (under International in System Preferences), activate Kotoeri (the Japanese input method) and select Romaji. While Romaji was meant to allow Japanese to be written phonetically using western (i.e. Roman) alphabets, there is no reason you cannot use it for your day-to-day needs as an English speaker, for example. Selecting Romaji in the Input Menu replaces the flag with a non-presumptuous capital A icon, and you can configure it to work with various keyboard layouts, though the default is US.

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