Cantonese IM on Snow Leopard
By rockia on Sep 18, 2009 with Comments 13
Apple Mac OS X has built-in Chinese input methods, for both Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. However, there is one popular input method still not yet been built and supported officially by Apple; that’s the Cantonese input.
One of the reason why Apple hasn’t made it built-in on Mac OS might because the population of the Cantonese input method user group is still relatively small. Well, we know that most Cantonese-speaking people are from Hong Kong and GuangDong Province; yet most of the people in GuangDong don’t use Cantonese input at all; they mostly use Pin-Yin or Stroke input.
Good that someone made it possible on Mac. You can visit the official site for CantonIM for all the detail, if you can’t download from the input method, you can also download it here. (Note: I take no credit for this CantonIM plugin; I am just putting it here for alternate download source and I will remove it base on author’s request.) I hereby give special thanks to the author who made a great contribution to Chinese Mac user community; it’s very helpful especially for those who use Cantonese Input as their most familiar input.
I have a friend who is still not upgrading his Leopard to Snow Leopard because he uses Cantonese input every day and if CantonIM doesn’t work on Snow Leopard, he will need to use Windows again which he is no willing to do so. So I did a test on my Snow Leopard-installed Macbook; even it doesn’t work, it matters no much to me since I don’t know Cantonese input at all. 
The installation is the same as on Leopard. What you need to do is download the .dmg file, extract it and copy the Canton08.inputplugin to path “/Users/YOUR USER NAME/Library/Input Methods/” folder. Then restart your Mac OS and check your CantonIM under “System Preference-> Language and Text -> Input source”.
If it doesn’t work, there is a readme file in the .dmg file, you can check it and trouble shoot yourself. Or you can try contact the author or maybe I can help you out too.
Good luck with your Cantonese input and happy Chinese typing with the input method you are most familiar with; and now on Mac too.
Another thing I found it’s interesting that, from the same plugin, the icon is different on Leopard and on Snow Leopard. Let’s take a look:
(First one is on Leopard and the second one is on Snow Leopard)
Filed Under: Operating Systems
Thank you! The CantonIM website seem not to have the .dmg file you put above. So happy to hv found it. I got it working already! But it already crashed my word once after installing. And I can’t seem to get some of the original words I had in the old version. Like under “ngo”, I cannot find “me”. Weird. But thanks anyway!
Oh nm. Got the “me” to work, it should be “ngor” instead.
Also like to mention under International–> Input method, the icon did not appear under traditional chinese, it appeared after Canadian French. In case someone else will find this info useful.
Thanks!!!! It works perfect on my Snow Leopard 10.6.1 !!! The input method show as “canton by it selfs…
Thank You for the link! The official website still says “OS 10.4…”, but your other link works perfectly.
thanks so much, i’ve been looking for cantonese input for almost 6 months ever since i’d switched fr PC to mac. all previous versions i’d d/l were not working, including the one i d/l fr cantonIM website.
thanks for posting the link
i’ve tested on snow leopard 10.6.6. So far working flawlessly.
thank you for the link.
Thanks for your feedback DnA,
! I don’t know Cantonese IM myself so I didn’t really try it on the latest version of Snow Leopard. It’s good to have someone to confirm.
I download the CantonIM, but it’s seem doesn’t work on OS 10.6.4, do you have any other suggestion??
Thanks!
Someone just tested it on 10.6.6 and it works “flawlessly”, you should update your OS to 10.6.6 and see if it solves the problem.
Sir, there is no need to restart the Mac OS after copying the file. It works at once.
hi i can’t type with this input. Like i swear you are meant to hit the space bar after each pronunciation to get the word. But i’ve hit the space bar but it doesn’t seem to be working.
i wonder why mine cant… i mean i can successfully get the Canton in my menu tab , but whe i type it out there is only pinyin , no cantonese character comes out…
Anyone able to get this to work with Mac OS X Lion?
I just see English letters when I type and no character suggestions.
cheers,
ajung.