Generate IPA characters on your Mac
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You won't be able to use IPA on your Mac until you have an IPA font installed, and Mac doesn't install one by default. It is true that some Mac fonts have some IPA characters, but they lack a complete set. Just go to Cool free IPA fonts to download and get a real IPA font. If you need help installing it, go to How to install fonts on your computer.
If you're going to be using IPA fonts for more than just viewing, you'll definitely want to make sure the Character Palette is enabled:
For more information on this from the Apple site, see: http://www.apple.com/pro/techniques/glyphspalette/
Another way to enter IPA characters on the Mac is to use IPA Palette created by Brian Hall. IPA Palette creates a "keyboard" on your screen so you can just click on the characters to enter them:
IPA Palette is free and you can get it from http://www.blugs.com/IPA/ .
If you want to make use of the hex codes in the IPA chart to simply type IPA characters on the fly with your keyboard, you'll need to first enable the Unicode Hex Input keyboard (installed with OS X). To do this:
Now, when you want to type Unicode hex codes (Note: these are the codes with numbers in the range 0-9 and A-F. Yes, A through F are numbers in hex world), switch keyboards from the flag icon drop-down menu on the upper right of your screen, then hold down the Option key and type the four-digit code corresponding to the IPA character you need.
(If the Unicode Hex Input keyboard is greyed out in the input menu, it means you're working in an application that doesn't support it.)