fonts introduced by custom keyboard shortcuts

[grammatim]

I've made lots and lots of custom keyboard shortcuts for letters with
diacritics, and almost all of them work throughout Word, even in the
Find/Replace windows.

However, a few of them insist on inserting their letters in Tahoma or
in Arial Unicode instead of in the font I'm actually using; I've
tried
deleting the custom commands and closing and reopening Word, but the
problem persists. What can be done?


Why do a few of them not work in Find/Replace?


If this is the correct newsgroup for this sort of question, I'll also
be asking about why i can't enter Oriya or Sinhala characters properly
using Word2003 in XP Pro (SP2).

If not, where should I ask these questions?

[Character]

Post by grammatim
I've made lots and lots of custom keyboard shortcuts for letters with
diacritics, and almost all of them work throughout Word, even in the
Find/Replace windows.
However, a few of them insist on inserting their letters in Tahoma or
in Arial Unicode instead of in the font I'm actually using; I've
tried
deleting the custom commands and closing and reopening Word, but the
problem persists. What can be done?
Why do a few of them not work in Find/Replace?

Not all fonts have all the glyphs for all the characters. In some
circumstances, if a font doesn't support a particular unicode
character, Word will find a font that does. Arial Unicode has one of
the more extensive character sets, so it gets used as the replacement.

Post by grammatim
If this is the correct newsgroup for this sort of question, I'll also
be asking about why i can't enter Oriya or Sinhala characters properly
using Word2003 in XP Pro (SP2).
If not, where should I ask these questions?

Here is good.

Another useful font forum is comp.fonts.

- Character

[grammatim]

Post by Character

Post by grammatim
I've made lots and lots of custom keyboard shortcuts for letters with
diacritics, and almost all of them work throughout Word, even in the
Find/Replace windows.
However, a few of them insist on inserting their letters in Tahoma or
in Arial Unicode instead of in the font I'm actually using; I've
tried
deleting the custom commands and closing and reopening Word, but the
problem persists. What can be done?
Why do a few of them not work in Find/Replace?

Not all fonts have all the glyphs for all the characters. In some
circumstances, if a font doesn't support a particular unicode
character, Word will find a font that does. Arial Unicode has one of
the more extensive character sets, so it gets used as the replacement.

Not even close, and definitely no cigar. If I use lots of diacritics
(for linguistics, as it happens), do you suppose I'd be using a font
that doesn't support them?

I use Gentium now, because it has even more such characters than Times
New Roman.

Post by Character

Post by grammatim
If this is the correct newsgroup for this sort of question, I'll also
be asking about why i can't enter Oriya or Sinhala characters properly
using Word2003 in XP Pro (SP2).
If not, where should I ask these questions?

Here is good.

Ok. When I type in the Indic scripts for which keyboards are provided
-- Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi = Gurmukhi so far, and I'm about to use
the four scripts for Dravidian languages (Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam,
Tamil) -- I type a consonant and then a vowel, and the vowel symbol
goes to its proper place w.r.t. the consonant symbol (right, left,
both, above, or below) and the consonant-vowel symbol becomes a single
unit for e.g. cursor movement.

However, when I enter characters in Oriya or Sinhala, whether by
Insert Symbol, Find/Replace, or Copy/Paste, this does not happen: the
vowel symbol does not go to the proper place, and the syllables do not
become single units.

For the vowels, this is tolerable (though annoying), because I'm not
typing documents in these languages, but only linguistic examples. But
it's absolutely fatal for the consonant combinations known as
conjuncts, because there is no way to access them other than through
Uniscribe.

Someone has suggested that XP has never been adapted to any version of
Unicode later than 2.0, and that I would have to switch to Vista to
type in any scripts not found in Unicode 2.0 from ten years ago.

I don't know whether Vista will even run on my computer, and I have
heard such terrible things about it in general that I don't wish to
try to find out.

So, what's the true story?

Post by Character
Another useful font forum is comp.fonts.

Does it understand how Unicode does or does not interact with XP Pro?

[Character]

grammatim wrote:

< ... >

Post by grammatim

Post by Character
Another useful font forum is comp.fonts.

Does it understand how Unicode does or does not interact with XP Pro

[And with specific applications, since not all interact the same way].

'IT' doesn't understand anything ... but many of the people there do
[definitely NOT including myself] :)

- Ch.

[Tom Ferguson]

I don't know what you herd about Vista and I'm not entirely sure I want
those details. However, I have three boxes running Vista 64 and one running
Vista Home Premium. Also, I use Vista on my laptop and have had few
problems. I had to replace a couple of network cards and update a few
software programs to Vista-compatible versions. However, that is peripheral
to your actual problem.

I have no experience with Unicode support and multiple foreign languages.
However, I have a couple of contacts who do. If you wish, I will forward
your questions to them. If you have some particular queries aside from those
you already expressed, send them via the newsgroup or to my e-mail address.
***@2547gmail.com (remove the numerals). I will forward them later in
the week (vacation time for them now).

Post by Character

Post by grammatim
I've made lots and lots of custom keyboard shortcuts for letters with
diacritics, and almost all of them work throughout Word, even in the
Find/Replace windows.
However, a few of them insist on inserting their letters in Tahoma or
in Arial Unicode instead of in the font I'm actually using; I've
tried
deleting the custom commands and closing and reopening Word, but the
problem persists. What can be done?
Why do a few of them not work in Find/Replace?

Not all fonts have all the glyphs for all the characters. In some
circumstances, if a font doesn't support a particular unicode
character, Word will find a font that does. Arial Unicode has one of
the more extensive character sets, so it gets used as the replacement.

Not even close, and definitely no cigar. If I use lots of diacritics
(for linguistics, as it happens), do you suppose I'd be using a font
that doesn't support them?

I use Gentium now, because it has even more such characters than Times
New Roman.

Post by Character

Post by grammatim
If this is the correct newsgroup for this sort of question, I'll also
be asking about why i can't enter Oriya or Sinhala characters properly
using Word2003 in XP Pro (SP2).
If not, where should I ask these questions?

Here is good.

Ok. When I type in the Indic scripts for which keyboards are provided
-- Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi = Gurmukhi so far, and I'm about to use
the four scripts for Dravidian languages (Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam,
Tamil) -- I type a consonant and then a vowel, and the vowel symbol
goes to its proper place w.r.t. the consonant symbol (right, left,
both, above, or below) and the consonant-vowel symbol becomes a single
unit for e.g. cursor movement.

However, when I enter characters in Oriya or Sinhala, whether by
Insert Symbol, Find/Replace, or Copy/Paste, this does not happen: the
vowel symbol does not go to the proper place, and the syllables do not
become single units.

For the vowels, this is tolerable (though annoying), because I'm not
typing documents in these languages, but only linguistic examples. But
it's absolutely fatal for the consonant combinations known as
conjuncts, because there is no way to access them other than through
Uniscribe.

Someone has suggested that XP has never been adapted to any version of
Unicode later than 2.0, and that I would have to switch to Vista to
type in any scripts not found in Unicode 2.0 from ten years ago.

I don't know whether Vista will even run on my computer, and I have
heard such terrible things about it in general that I don't wish to
try to find out.

So, what's the true story?

Post by Character
Another useful font forum is comp.fonts.

Does it understand how Unicode does or does not interact with XP Pro?

[grammatim]

Thank you for the offer. Being in google groups, I can't see your
address!

There's also the matter of cost, and of what happens to all my
existing customization settings with the changeover, and the question
of whether the hardware will even support Vista.

"Few problems"?

BTW I looked in at comp.fonts, and it doesn't appear to deal with any
questions beyond identifying fonts from samples of a few letters, and
how to get fonts.

Post by Tom Ferguson
I don't know what you herd about Vista and I'm not entirely sure I want
those details. However, I have three boxes running Vista 64 and one running
Vista Home Premium. Also, I use Vista on my laptop and have had few
problems. I had to replace a couple of network cards and update a few
software programs to Vista-compatible versions. However, that is peripheral
to your actual problem.
I have no experience with Unicode support and multiple foreign languages.
However, I have a couple of contacts who do. If you wish, I will forward
your questions to them. If you have some particular queries aside from those
you already expressed, send them via the newsgroup or to my e-mail address.
the week (vacation time for them now).

Post by Character

Post by grammatim
I've made lots and lots of custom keyboard shortcuts for letters with
diacritics, and almost all of them work throughout Word, even in the
Find/Replace windows.
However, a few of them insist on inserting their letters in Tahoma or
in Arial Unicode instead of in the font I'm actually using; I've
tried
deleting the custom commands and closing and reopening Word, but the
problem persists. What can be done?
Why do a few of them not work in Find/Replace?

Not all fonts have all the glyphs for all the characters. In some
circumstances, if a font doesn't support a particular unicode
character, Word will find a font that does. Arial Unicode has one of
the more extensive character sets, so it gets used as the replacement.

Not even close, and definitely no cigar. If I use lots of diacritics
(for linguistics, as it happens), do you suppose I'd be using a font
that doesn't support them?
I use Gentium now, because it has even more such characters than Times
New Roman.

Post by Character

Post by grammatim
If this is the correct newsgroup for this sort of question, I'll also
be asking about why i can't enter Oriya or Sinhala characters properly
using Word2003 in XP Pro (SP2).
If not, where should I ask these questions?

Here is good.

Ok. When I type in the Indic scripts for which keyboards are provided
-- Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi = Gurmukhi so far, and I'm about to use
the four scripts for Dravidian languages (Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam,
Tamil) -- I type a consonant and then a vowel, and the vowel symbol
goes to its proper place w.r.t. the consonant symbol (right, left,
both, above, or below) and the consonant-vowel symbol becomes a single
unit for e.g. cursor movement.
However, when I enter characters in Oriya or Sinhala, whether by
Insert Symbol, Find/Replace, or Copy/Paste, this does not happen: the
vowel symbol does not go to the proper place, and the syllables do not
become single units.
For the vowels, this is tolerable (though annoying), because I'm not
typing documents in these languages, but only linguistic examples. But
it's absolutely fatal for the consonant combinations known as
conjuncts, because there is no way to access them other than through
Uniscribe.
Someone has suggested that XP has never been adapted to any version of
Unicode later than 2.0, and that I would have to switch to Vista to
type in any scripts not found in Unicode 2.0 from ten years ago.
I don't know whether Vista will even  run on my computer, and I have
heard such terrible things about it in general that I don't wish to
try to find out.
So, what's the true story?

Post by Character
Another useful font forum is comp.fonts.

Does it understand how Unicode does or does not interact with XP Pro?- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

[Character]

Post by grammatim
BTW I looked in at comp.fonts, and it doesn't appear to deal with any
questions beyond identifying fonts from samples of a few letters, and
how to get fonts.

Not so. True, there's a lot of that, but there are also long technical
discussions, at various levels. The most recent I see was in early
June regarding historical Irish typography; a Greek encoding
discussion, about a year ago, etc. Comp.fonts was orignally THE font
developer's discussion group, before usenet opened itself to the
world. Many developers still look in and respond there. Other forums
include Typophile, Adobe Forums, the Type Design forum, and the Typo-L
Discussion lists.

I mentioned comp.fonts first because it's accessible via what you're
already using, Google Groups. The others are web-based and require
registration (free).

- Character

[grammatim]

Post by Character

Post by grammatim
BTW I looked in at comp.fonts, and it doesn't appear to deal with any
questions beyond identifying fonts from samples of a few letters, and
how to get fonts.

Not so. True, there's a lot of that, but there are also long technical
discussions, at various levels. The most recent I see was in early
June regarding historical Irish typography; a Greek encoding
discussion, about a year ago, etc. Comp.fonts was orignally THE font
developer's discussion group, before usenet opened itself to the
world. Many developers still look in and respond there. Other forums
include Typophile, Adobe Forums, the Type Design forum, and the Typo-L
Discussion lists.
I mentioned comp.fonts first because it's accessible via what you're
already using, Google Groups. The others are web-based and require
registration (free).

They all sound like they deal with design rather than with my current
problems of _using_ virtually every script in the world.

[DOsser]

Post by grammatim

Post by Character

Post by grammatim
BTW I looked in at comp.fonts, and it doesn't appear to deal with any
questions beyond identifying fonts from samples of a few letters, and
how to get fonts.

Not so. True, there's a lot of that, but there are also long technical
discussions, at various levels. The most recent I see was in early
June regarding historical Irish typography; a Greek encoding
discussion, about a year ago, etc. Comp.fonts was orignally THE font
developer's discussion group, before usenet opened itself to the
world. Many developers still look in and respond there. Other forums
include Typophile, Adobe Forums, the Type Design forum, and the Typo-L
Discussion lists.
I mentioned comp.fonts first because it's accessible via what you're
already using, Google Groups. The others are web-based and require
registration (free).

They all sound like they deal with design rather than with my current
problems of _using_ virtually every script in the world.

The way fonts are created - their encoding, use of unicode, opentype
features, supported codepages, and all such arcana - is absolutely
critical to how you can use them. Unfortunately, there has been little
consistency between vendors and foundries. Not to mention Mac/PC
differences such as the drastically different use of the "Style"
attribute - and the differences between how Microsoft and Adobe
applications interpret them under Windows. These 'design' topics are
definitely discussed in just about any of the abovmentioned fora.
Besides, what have you got to lose?

- Character

[grammatim]

Post by DOsser

Post by grammatim

Post by Character

Post by grammatim
BTW I looked in at comp.fonts, and it doesn't appear to deal with any
questions beyond identifying fonts from samples of a few letters, and
how to get fonts.

Not so. True, there's a lot of that, but there are also long technical
discussions, at various levels. The most recent I see was in early
June regarding historical Irish typography; a Greek encoding
discussion, about a year ago, etc. Comp.fonts was orignally THE font
developer's discussion group, before usenet opened itself to the
world. Many developers still look in and respond there. Other forums
include Typophile, Adobe Forums, the Type Design forum, and the Typo-L
Discussion lists.
I mentioned comp.fonts first because it's accessible via what you're
already using, Google Groups. The others are web-based and require
registration (free).

They all sound like they deal with design rather than with my current
problems of _using_ virtually every script in the world.

The way fonts are created - their encoding, use of unicode, opentype
features, supported codepages, and all such arcana - is absolutely
critical to how you can use them. Unfortunately, there has been little
consistency between vendors and foundries. Not to mention Mac/PC
differences such as the drastically different use of the "Style"
attribute - and the differences between how Microsoft and Adobe
applications interpret them under Windows.  These 'design' topics are
definitely discussed in just about any of the abovmentioned fora.
Besides, what have you got to lose?

Maybe you don't know perfectly well that that's not what is usually
meant by "type design."

"Type design" refers to the appearance of the letterforms.

While I am very much interested in type design in that sense (and not
in the least interested in the "arcana" involved in getting the type
into my computer), at this point I am primarily interested in getting
the exotic fonts _out_ of my computer onto paper and pdfs. Once I've
typed my Malayalam or Armenian text, then I can try substututing the
variety of available Armenian or Malayalam fonts and seeing which one
I like best.

Armenian is straightforward -- it's just an alphabet, one keyboard key
per letter. Malayalam and the other scripts of India are not so
straightforward. Consonants and vowels, and consonants and consonants,
combine in special ways, and those ways are built into the fonts and
the supporting "arcana," and they are accessed by keyboards. But
unless I can find the instructions for using those keyboards, I can't
get at the glyphs that are produced by the "arcana" and not directly
by typing!