Unable to type any APL characters in Dyalog (Unicode)?

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Unable to type any APL characters in Dyalog (Unicode)?

Postby Vince|Dyalog on Fri Apr 11, 2014 9:20 am

This guide assumes that you are trying to type APL characters on a US keyboard. If your setup and location is different, please substitute (en-US) with the appropriate language and country codes.

1) In our Options->Configure->Unicode input page, tick both the checkboxes. In the Combo box (towards the bottom of the list), please choose our Dyalog IME.

This should be listed as "Dyalog APL IME (en-US)". Go to step 4 if our IME is not listed at all.

2) Close and restart Dyalog.

Are you able to type APL characters such as ⍺ with Ctrl+a? Or ⍳ with Ctrl+i?

3) If not, try to see if you can manually choose our IME. To do this, it's best to show the Windows Language Bar.

In Windows XP, right click on the clear area below or near the Start Button, and choose Toolbars. Then, ask the Windows Language Bar to appear. Right click on it and choose "Restore the Language Bar".

In Windows 7, click on Control Panel/Region and Language icon. Click on the Keyboards and Languages tab.

XP or 7: Then, hit the "Change Keyboards..." button. This brings up the "Text Services and Input Languages" dialog. Click on the Language Bar tab. Tick "Floating on Desktop" for the language bar to see it.


In Windows 8, 8.1, or 10, we need to get to the "Change your language preferences" dialog.
Windows 8.x: Open the Control Panel. Click on the Region Icon. Click on the Language Preferences link.
Windows 10: Open Settings. In the "Find a setting" field, type Language. Click on the "Language" icon.

Then, in the language preferences dialog, on the left, click on "Advanced settings". Under "Switching input methods", put a tick in the "Use the desktop language bar when it's available". On the right, click on the Options link and choose "Floating on desktop". Click OK and then Save.


This can then float on top of the desktop, and you can look at it to confirm that you are using the IME when typing into Dyalog.

If the Windows Language Bar does not come up, check to see that you have more than one language in the Installed services group on the General Page of the "Text Services and Input Languages" dialog. If you don't, add one other language of your choice. This will ensure that the Windows Language Bar does come up.

4) If you cannot manually choose our IME, see if you can add it. For Windows XP and 7, follow the instructions to step 3 to get to the "Text Services and Input Languages" dialog. On the General Tab, select the Add... button. Click on the + next to your language and region. If you can see our Dyalog IME there, click on the tick box next to it to add a tick.

For Windows 8 and 8.1, go to Control Panel->Language. On the right of your region, click on the Options link. Under Input Method, click on "Add an input method". See if you can see a IME box with Dyalog APL IME(en-US) next to it. Click on this box. Then, click Add. Then Save.

For Windows 10, please follow the instructions on this page:
http://www.dyalog.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=893

5) If steps 3 and 4 do not help you, the next step would be to uninstall and reinstall our Dyalog IME.

To uninstall, go to the Control Panel and "Programs and Features" or "Add or Remove Programs". Our IME will be listed as "Dyalog APL (64-bit) Unicode IME". (It's 64-bit if your operating system is 64-bit, otherwise it will be 32-bit.)

If you cannot find a listing for Dyalog Unicode IME, it has been installed as part of Dyalog. Choose to Uninstall Dyalog, but only tick the box to Uninstall the Unicode IME.

To install it again, go to the folder on your local hard drive which contains our Dyalog installer files that you extracted from our setup zip file (or download it from: http://dyalog.com/apl-font-keyboard.htm). Please start Windows cmd.exe by right clicking on it and choosing "Run as administrator". cd to the directory where you have the setup_ime_nn.msi file (where nn will be 32 or 64, depending on whether you're running on Windows 32 or 64-bit).

Run this command:
msiexec -i setup_ime_nn.msi

Once it has been re-installed, please reboot and try out step 3 again.

Contact Dyalog Support if you have any questions or difficulties.

[edited on 13 Oct 2015 to add Windows 10 information]
Last edited by Vince|Dyalog on Wed Oct 16, 2019 12:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: add better info about uninstalling IME and installing a .msi file
Vince|Dyalog
 
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Joined: Wed Oct 01, 2008 9:39 am

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