Chinese handwriting recognition is now available on multi-touch trackpads

May 11, 2009 07:01 GMT  ·  By

Apple has seeded developers with a new build of Snow Leopard, whose seed notes show a couple of noteworthy changes. Those include Chinese handwriting recognition on multi-touch-capable Macs and issues with installing the software on a MacBook Air via a shared optical disk.

The seed notes for Mac OS X 10.6 Build 10A354 reveal that Snow Leopard shows signs of less adding of features and more tweaking and bug fixing, according to the folks at World of Apple (also responsible for the seed notes). The site itself points out to the addition of Chinese handwriting recognition on multi-touch-capable Macs as a notable change. The notes also warn of a bunch of known issues, particularly with installing the software on a MacBook Air via a shared optical disk. The complete seed notes for the latest Snow Leopard beta are available below.

Installation Issues

· Installing on MacBook Air via a shared optical disk may result in errors depending on the available printers while installing. Customize the install and select all printer packages to workaround this. · After installing over the network via a shared optical disk, volumes other than the boot volume may not appear when you get to the desktop. They can be remounted using Disk Utility, or by rebooting. · Some users have reported errors during installation. Please report the issue and try again if you encounter this.

Changes Since the Last Seed

· Chinese Handwriting recognition is available when the Chinese input method is enabled on multi-touch-capable machines. · The Language & Text Preference Pane includes new support for bidirectional text & Chinese Handwriting.

Known Issues

· Spaces and Exposé Dock icons may turn into question marks if you are upgrading on top of an older seed build. Drag the question marks out the Dock and drag the icons from /Applications/Utilities back to the Dock to workaround this. · Microsoft Word 2008 may experience crashes during regular use. Other Office 2008 apps should be unaffected. · The ‘Before’ and ‘After’ tabs in the dialog for resolving Address Book syncing conflicts don’t show the correct values until you double-click on each one. · Spotlight will reindex all volumes after upgrading to this seed build. · Creating new files over an AFP connection may result in unexpected behaviors. · Applications that use CFFileDescriptor, such as Spotlight or Time Machine, may experience hangs or other unexpected behavior.

Apple is expected to release Snow Leopard two months after WWDC '09.