Apple Mac - Keyboard and keystroke symbols

[Techno]

Has anyone any advice with regard to referring to keyboard shortcuts on the Mac? Are there in fact Unicode type symbols which can be used? For example and Command and Option keys.

I'm having to produce a Mac version of a Windows application, and it is essential that things are as clear as possible. I'm new to Macs myself, and have just spent a frustrating amount of time looking for the "Options" key. I eventually found it's the unshifted key labelled "Alt").

To complicate the task, if there is a symbol, I need the Voice Over screen reader to actually speak what it is.

Any thoughts?

[sfoley]

Has anyone any advice with regard to referring to keyboard shortcuts on the Mac? Are there in fact Unicode type symbols which can be used? For example and Command and Option keys.

Google is your friend.

- Some keyboard layouts have shortcuts for common accented characters, like Cmd+Opt+e, e to produce é in the U.S. English layout.
- If you need to do Unicode input using the numeric identifiers, you need to add and use a different keyboard layout.
- You can always copy and paste stuff from the Character Viewer.

[Techno]

Sorry I didn't make myself clear. I was meaning the symbols or glyphs as they appear on the keyboard, which are also echoed in the menus where the keyboard shortcuts are shown.

[RamonS]

Not sure if that is still the case, but looking at an old Apple keyboard that we have here in our Apple cube (in fact, that keyboard is from the Apple Cube) the only two glyphs that are special are the hollow Apple logo and the square thingy with the loops on the corners. The rest is spelled out as text or does not differ from a standard US keyboard. The only option would be to use a font that has these symbols as characters, which might work out if you publish to PDF. Otherwise you need to hope that the targeted Apple systems have the correct font present (not sure what the standard fonts on a Mac are and which special characters they contain). There is also the option to embed fonts, but that is frowned upon due to security reasons.
What will work for sure is to include the glyphs as images. Google lists a ton of resources for that. It is a bit annoying to insert an inline image each time, but that way it will work on all systems and outputs. The only other idea I have is to describe what the key is, for example, that key with the hollow Apple logo is also referred to as "Command key".

Now, which moron came up with the idea to create keyboards that are tied to an OS? And yes, that means the keyboards with the useless Windows keys as well!

[Techno]

I believe I may have found the answer at http://tech.karbassi.com/2009/05/27/com ... n-unicode/

Which begs another question. Is there a way, as there is in MS Office with Alt+x, to enter a Unicode value into Flare such as 2318 (Mac's Command symbol). That would be Utopia for this project.

I'm on a bit of a roll today, having succeeded in running the MAC version of the application, capturing dialogs with SnagIt, saving those direct into my project's images folders on my networked PC, then applying a Mac or Windows Condition.

[sfoley]

Which begs another question. Is there a way, as there is in MS Office with Alt+x, to enter a Unicode value into Flare such as 2318 (Mac's Command symbol). That would be Utopia for this project.

You can specify a "quick character" and then press F11 to insert it, but you can only specify one character at a time.

To do the Command key:
1. Select Insert > Character > Quick Character.
2. In the second text box, type 0x2318.
3. Click OK.

From then on, you could press F11 to insert ⌘.

Option key: 0x2325

Note that the characters will appear as a box if your current font doesn't support that glyph.

[Techno]

Thank you. This will undoubtedly be of help.

Is there no direct way to enter a Unicode Glyph wityhin the WYSIWYG editor?

[RamonS]

The question remains if it will be properly displayed on client systems, but I am sure you'll find out.

[Techno]

Thankfully if I use Ariel Unicode MS in Flare, they appear in Windows, and port over to the Mac Lion just fine.

Just wish I could key Unicode direct in to Flare as I can in Word.

[sfoley]

The question remains if it will be properly displayed on client systems, but I am sure you'll find out.

There's always font embedding.

[RamonS]

Yes, I know, but it is frowned upon for security reasons and some setups may outright reject embedded fonts.

[sfoley]

Yes, I know, but it is frowned upon for security reasons and some setups may outright reject embedded fonts.

This is utter nonsense.

- I am unable to find (and have never seen) a single security problem reported for any combination of browsers, platforms, or operating systems that involves font embedding. In fact, the only time I've seen font embedding mentioned as even a potential security problem is on hand-waving blog articles that are ignorant of how font embedding actually works. (Their arguments can be summarized as, "It's a binary file from an external source, so it must be scary!" They must also be afraid of images, then.)

- If you meant licensing issues, one assumes that a purchased font was properly licensed. If it wasn't, then there are plenty of free, open-source fonts with more-or-less complete Unicode glyph sets and no silly restrictions on their use.

- If your users' setup will "outright reject embedded fonts", then that basically means they've disabled both JavaScript and CSS. Then you have bigger problems: without JavaScript, both WebHelp formats won't show any content, and without CSS, your content will look absolutely terrible anyway.

[RamonS]

See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/secu ... n/ms06-002 for embedded web fonts and to a lesser extent this one: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/secu ... ry/2639658. Besides that, at least on Windows based systems the internet options can be configured to disable font downloads as detailed here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... 46862.aspx. As long as the consumers of the output are on Macs the situation may be different, but the handling of embedded fonts is a known attack vector.

[sfoley]

See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/secu ... n/ms06-002 for embedded web fonts and to a lesser extent this one: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/secu ... ry/2639658. Besides that, at least on Windows based systems the internet options can be configured to disable font downloads as detailed here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... 46862.aspx. As long as the consumers of the output are on Macs the situation may be different, but the handling of embedded fonts is a known attack vector.

Apparently, Google failed me when I was searching for these potential vulnerabilities. Apologies for that oversight.

Still, they aren't relevant:
- They affect only Internet Explorer on Windows. Yes, that's a big slice of people, but ...
- Both of them have been patched for well over a year. In your first example, for over five years.
- The mitigation strategy you describe does not affect other methods for font embedding. For example, cufon performs automatic image replacement instead of using CSS to apply a font file.

In other words, you note that a single method of font embedding might not work in one browser, for the small number of potential organizations who are characterized by their willingness to ignore Microsoft security updates in favor of removing functionality from their users for an indefinite time.

Okay.

[RamonS]

The majority of organizations will patch and on top of that disable font downloads.