--- You wrote:
>
>Confusion may stem from an interesting feature of keyboard selection (and 
>consequently, of the Keyboard Viewer).  Keyboard selection is now 
>window-specific (beginning with some version of Tiger).  Each window can 
>have a different keyboard selected, both for general typing and for 
>Keyboard Viewer.  For example, I can type in one document window with a 
>French keyboard, and in another with a Spanish keyboard.  Switching
>between 
>windows will switch the selected keyboard, and the Keyboard Viewer, if it
>
>Now and then, I find this to be very handy.  On a busy day, I may be 
>working on a document in English in Nisus Writer Express, editing Spanish 
>exam questions in one Word document, while preparing a French viewing 
>schedule in another Word document, and answering an email in Esperanto. 
>I 
>can set my desired keyboard for each task and window, and then click 
>between windows freely.  Each window will retain my desired keyboard.

I see what you're saying but we're talking apples and oranges (I think).
You're referring to behavior within an application, I'm talking about
behavior when switching applications. Example of what has happens:

US keyboard selected in the Finder. Launch Word. Select a Hawaiian
keyboard in a Word document and begin typing. Switch to Finder, and the US
Keyboard is still selected. Switch back to my Word document - it's changed
to US keyboard. Select the Hawaiian keyboard again in Word document,
switch to FirstClass document (a different Hawaiian keyboard selected),
switch back to Word doc, US keyboard selected again. Bottom line - any
time I switch away from a document in any application to a different app,
there is about a 90% chance that when I come back to it there will be a
different keyboard selected. Sometimes it is the keyboard from the app
that I am switching from, sometimes not. I have had cases where I do not
have the US keyboard selected in any app/document, but when I switch to an
app, it will appear. There must be some sort of logic to how it behaves,
but I can't figure it out and have spent hours trying.

There are two options in the Input menu of the International System
Preference - "Use one input source for all documents" and "Allow a
different input source for each document". This functionality seems to
work within a single application, like Word or in your case Nisus Writer.
"Use one input source for all documents" and you will see the same
keyboard for all documents within the app. "Allow a different input source
for each document" works as advertised within the same document. But when
I switch between applications this behavior goes out the door.

I have experienced this incredibly annoying behavior since 10.4 shipped,
and experience it on every computer we have (several dozen). The behavior
you describe would be fine for me as well if it had worked that way
between apps as we have two different Hawaiian keyboards - one with a
Roman script for our old, custom 8 bit fonts and one for the Unicode
keyboard that ships with OS X. Some older apps, especially FirstClass, are
still Carbon and do not support Unicode.

Here is an another incredibly annoying (at least to me) "feature" of
Tiger's keyboard. Previously, if you were using a carbon app (which don't
support unicode keyboards), the Unicode keyboards were greyed out and not
selectable. They are not anymore. I can select the Unicode "Hawaiian"
keyboard in FirstClass, however. The keyboard actually used will be the
last Roman keyboard that the user selected. If I happen to have last used
our older Roman script Hawaiian keyboard, it will use that. If you last
used the English keyboard, it will use that. But the keyboard menu still
shows the Unicode "Hawaiian" keyboard as the one being used - the icon
does not change. One very nasty result of this change is that when we use
AppleWorks (a carbon app) and accidentally select the Unicode Hawaiian
keyboard, AppleWorks will crash when we start typing. I know that AW is
orphaned, but it is still used in many schools.

It is possible that the behavior I'm experiencing is due to an issue with
carbon apps and their lack of support from some of the functionality of
the system. I just got my first Intel Mac, and haven't had a chance to
test these behaviors on it yet. The above behavior is all on PowerPC
machines. If it is any different on the Intel Macs I'll report it.
>
>The original poster indicated that while working in Word, "I have to
>click 
>on the desktop and then scroll the flag to the proper keyboard."  I find 
>this curious.  I can change keyboards freely within Word, and I never
>have 
>to click on the Desktop.   The poster then reports, "When I click back
>into 
>Word, however, the keyboard viewer reverts back to the U.S. keyboard."  I 
>think this is just an example of the window-specific nature of keyboard 
>selection.  I would restate the observation in different terms:  
>Clicking 
>back into Word doesn't revert to the US keyboard.  Rather, it retains my 
>previous keyboard selection for that window, which might have been US, 
>Spanish, French, Dvorak, or another.  I can select a different keyboard
>in 
>the Desktop, without affecting the keyboard previously selected for each 
>window of any open applications.  (However, I don't see any value in 
>selecting a keyboard for the Desktop.  I find that, unlike any
>application 
>window, the Desktop doesn't retain its own keyboard setting).

Perhaps I misread or misconstrued the original poster's email. I read it
to mean that they were experiencing the same behavior I decribed above.
>
>
>In contrast to Keola, I find that Tiger (OS 10.4.7) not only retains the 
>keyboard choice for a given application, it remembers the keyboard 
>selection independently for each open window within an application.  

Yes, within the application, but not between applications.

>For me, Panther 10.3.9 was neither window-specific nor application
>specific. 
>When I selected a keyboard in one application, it would affect all other 
>applications and windows.

Yes, this is what I experienced prior to 10.4 as well. Personally I would
prefer that behavior to the way it works between apps for me now.
>
>
>I would be interested in hearing what behavior other Mac users
>experience, 
>and whether the Intel Macs act differently than the PowerPCs.

Me too ;-)

Keola



 =======================================================================
Keola Donaghy                                           
Assistant Professor of Hawaiian Studies 
Ka Haka 'Ula O Ke'elikolani             [log in to unmask] 
University of Hawai'i at Hilo           http://www2.hawaii.edu/~donaghy/

"Tir gan teanga, tir gan anam."  (Irish Gaelic saying)
A country without its language is a country without its soul.
===============================================
--- end of quote ---


***********************************************
 LLTI is a service of IALLT, the International Association for
Language Learning (http://iallt.org/), and The Consortium for Language Teaching
and Learning (http://www.languageconsortium.org/).
Join IALLT at http://iallt.org.
Otmar Foelsche, LLTI-Editor ([log in to unmask])
***********************************************