IDN Email Bug in iOS Mail

If you happen to have an email address that uses an International Domain Name (IDN), i.e. one which includes non-ASCII characters (like info@蓝天东.org), you will find that it's not possible to set up an account in iOS Mail, even when you use the Punycode/ascii version (info@xn--xhq32y7n9a.org in the case mentioned earlier).  It just says the address is invalid and you cannot go further.  You can, however, set up such an account in OS X Mail.

One possible iPad work around is to try the alternative free email app Incredimail, which normally lets you set up everything without problem.  It does not yet support POP, however, only IMAP.  Another work around is to have your IDN at Godaddy, which has its own app for doing email hosted by its servers.

Bug in Apple Devanagari Font

A poster in the Apple Support Communities has pointed out that the font Devanagari Sangam used for iOS (and also available in OS X 10.7 and higher) produces the wrong glyph for the sequence r + virama + h.   For some reason it generates the glyph for the sequence r + virama + h + e instead.

The font Devanagari MT, which is the default for OS X, does not have this problem, so using that is a fix.  For iOS there is no way to avoid the bug until Apple fixes Devanagari Sangam.

Note:  Fixed in 10.9

Typing Runic

In addition to its historic uses, the Runic script appears in the recent Hobbit movie and the Tolkien book on which that is based.  To type Runic in OS X you need to add a font and a keyboard layout for the Unicode Runic range.  A good font is Quivira, and there are keyboards available here and here.

Unfortunately there is no way to type Runic yet in iOS devices.

OS X: Glitches With Traditional Chinese Cangjie Input

A poster in the Apple Support Communities recently pointed out that some Chinese characters cannot be made with the Cangjie sequences they were accustomed to, even though these worked fine on their iOS devices.

It turns out that OS X has different Cangjie sequences for certain characters.  You can see what these are by selecting the character and going to the "flag" (Input Source) menu when Cangjie is selected and then down to the bottom and choosing Find Input Code.