Enabling Khmer Unicode Keyboard on MacOS Sierra 10.12

You don't need to install anything on MacOS Sierra v10.12 or may be even on Mac OSX Mavericks v10.9. The Khmer Unicode keyboard layout and font (Kh Battambang) are built-in. It was created by Mr. Danh Hong (dnhhng@yahoo.com). To make it show up in the Menu bar, you have to open the Keyboard Preferences and add the keyboard named Khmer in the Input Sources as shown below.

Note that this keyboard layout does not work well with the Khmer fonts created by different developers. The issue can be missing or overlapping characters in Microsoft Offices. You have to use the fonts created by Mr. Danh Hong such as Kh Battambang (similar to Limon S1) and Kh Muol (similar to Limon R1).

Keyboard layout

Khmer Unicode Font Error: unable to type two vowels for one consonant

I can't type two vowels for one consonant in a newly created document of both MS Word and OpenOffice for Mac OS Sierra. I couldn't type the word below pronounced as /pei/.

I tried both ways below but it didn't work.

Surprisingly, it worked for the word 'eat' in Khmer.

This problem didn't happen when I typed the word in Chrome's address bar. I tried to type the word using the fonts Khmer OS System, Khmer OS Content, Khmer OS Battambang, Koh Santepheap, and DaunPenh in MS Word and OpenOffice but still no luck. At last, I found one that worked for me. It was Kh Battambang. I think it came with Mac OS by default because it showed in the Computer list in Font Book application.

Microsoft Word document saved in Windows 7 does not display correctly on Mac OS

I created a Microsoft Word document on Windows 7. The fonts I used in the document were Khmer OS Battambang and Khmer Mool. After that I opened it in Microsoft Word on Mac OS Sierra and the text did not display correctly. Please see the image below for how it looked like.

The problem I'm trying to fix in this post is some vowels and consonants overlapped each other. Those texts were displayed using Khmer OS Battambang font. (The square symbols resulted from missing the font Khmer Mool.)

When I copied the text and pasted it to the browser's address bar, they displayed correctly. I then created a new document in MS Word and paste it to the new document, and it still didn't work. It seemed that the problem is with the MS Word for Mac.

There are 2 workarounds:

1. Installed OpenOffice then opened the document in it, and the text was fine but the symbols in the third line were replaced by square symbols. 
2. You have to replace Khmer OS Battambang with Kh Battambang and make sure you install the font in another computer too. This is because the Khmer Unicode keyboard layout I installed was created to use with Kh Battambang font. If you need another font similar to Limon R1, you can use Kh Muol.

Install Khmer Unicode Keyboard on Mac OSX Lion v10.7

Installing Khmer Unicode Keyboard

Khmer font was added by default on Mac OSX Lion v10.7 but you have to enable it by go to
- System Preferences then Language & Text
- Under Input Sources tab, check Khmer from the "Select input sources to use." pane.

Or you can also download the keyboard layout and install it from Cambosastra website (read its instruction).  

Problems

1. The Khmer keyboard layout come within OSX maps 'F' key to letter 'ផ' instead of 'ថ' so you should use the layout from Cambosastra team instead by selecting 'Khmer V2' in Keyboard preferences.

2. In Microsoft Word, the Apple's Khmer font named "Khmer Sangam MN" is broken; It does not display correctly when you type. You should install another font such as Koh Santepheap. You can download it from here too.

Create shortcut key to switch between languages

- Go to System Preferences then Keyboard and click on Keyboard Shortcuts tab
- Then, click on Keyboard & Text at the right sidebar and check "Select the previous input source" and then modify its shortcut key to Shirt + Command + Space. Then, make sure "Select next source in Input menu" is unchecked. Then, change the shortcut

- After that, click on Spotlight then check "Show Spotlight search field" and change its shortcut key to Command + Space and make sure "Show Spotlight window" is unchecked

References

- http://www.cambosastra.org/how-to-set-up-khmer-unicode-for-mac/

Installing Khmer Unicode Font on Windows 7

1. Download the installation file from here and install it
2. Manually install the fonts
   - Download fonts LimonS1 and LimonR1
   - Double click on them and click on Install button