I have Inkscape installed on an IMac running OS X 10.6.3; the interface language has been set to English. I've created some graphics with geographic information about countries in Europe, including the names their natives use for them, and I want to include the written forms of these names for countries that use the Cyrillic or Greek alphabets instead of Latin. But I can't get Inkscape to let me do that. It currently accepts input only in the Latin alphabet.

I tried all of the following:

* Using the OS X "Language and Text" facility to type in the names on virtual Serbian, Ukrainian, and Greek (etc.) keyboards

* Using the OS X Special Characters panel to locate and insert the characters one at a time

* Setting the Inkscape Text tool in Unicode mode by typing Ctrl-U, then entering characters 4 digits at a time (said digits obtained from the Special Characters panel)

All methods produced the same result: regardless of what key or keys I pressed, nothing appeared on the screen.

I thought the problem might lie in my having selected English instead of System Default (which happens to be English) as the Inkscape interface language of choice, so I tried resetting it to System Default. The only thing that changed however, was that the program went back to the behavior that caused me to specify English in the first place: it displayed one item on the menu bar and several in its submenus in Greek. Not just Greek characters, genuine Greek words. Even when set to English it continues to use the Greek equivalent of "yesterday" and name the days of the week in Greek when these appear in the "last modified" column of a file menu.

I have nothing against the noble Greek tongue, of which I know a few words (including, fortunately, the days of the week), and I mention this minor weirdness only because it's just a bit annoying for Inkscape to give me Greek where I never asked for it, but refuse to recognize that language (or apparently any language that doesn't use the Latin alphabet) when I need and want it.

If anyone has a solution to suggest, I'd be most grateful.

Ancient BP

Ancient BP wrote:the interface language has been set to English. I've created some graphics with geographic information about countries in Europe, including the names their natives use for them, and I want to include the written forms of these names for countries that use the Cyrillic or Greek alphabets instead of Latin. But I can't get Inkscape to let me do that. It currently accepts input only in the Latin alphabet.

maybe related to bug #282017 in Inkscape: “[MacOSX] Cannot input Japanese text”

The next version (Inkscape 0.48) will include a 'Glyphs' dialog that allows to insert glyphs in various different scripts from all available unicode ranges of the selected font. There are development snapshots (Inkscape 0.47+devel) for testing and bug reporting available, see the link on the official download page for Inkscape. While it doesn't solve the input method problem of Inkscape running under X11/Xquartz on MacOS X, it might provide a workaround for individual letters or short texts.

Ancient BP wrote:I thought the problem might lie in my having selected English instead of System Default (which happens to be English) as the Inkscape interface language of choice, so I tried resetting it to System Default. The only thing that changed however, was that the program went back to the behavior that caused me to specify English in the first place: it displayed one item on the menu bar and several in its submenus in Greek. Not just Greek characters, genuine Greek words. Even when set to English it continues to use the Greek equivalent of "yesterday" and name the days of the week in Greek when these appear in the "last modified" column of a file menu.

Please check the following OS X System Preferences setting:

System Preferences > International > Language > Order for sorted lists

1. Is it set to 'Greek'?
2. Does setting it back to 'Standard' restore English as System Default UI language in Inkscape?

maybe related to bug #488120 in Inkscape: “Font changing gradually to Greek”

Thanks, ~suv. I haven't yet had time to try the workaround suggested in the first thread you cited, but I'll do that later today. Meantime, I did find the OS X setting you mentioned and indeed it was set to Greek. That probably happened when the IMac was new (less than 2 years ago) and I was first figuring out how to enter Greek text, and was forgotten afterwards. When I reset it to "standard" and reset the Inkscape interface to "system default," all was well. Even in the file list, 'Friday' and 'Saturday' now appear instead of 'Paraskevi' and 'Savvaton.' As I said, it's a minor matter, but I'm glad to get it cleared up.

ABP