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?

grammatim wrote:
> 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.

> 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

On Jun 30, 12:18 am, Character <C...@cters.bold.italic> wrote:
> grammatim wrote:
> > 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.

> > 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?

> Another useful font forum is comp.fonts.

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

grammatim wrote:

< ... >

>>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.

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. 
tom.msmvp@2547gmail.com (remove the numerals). I will forward them later in 
the week (vacation time for them now).

"grammatim"  wrote in message 
news:3091fcbe-6ac6-41b2-986d-3c3d0ac50d07@k37g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
On Jun 30, 12:18 am, Character <C...@cters.bold.italic> wrote:
> grammatim wrote:
> > 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.

> > 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?

> Another useful font forum is comp.fonts.

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

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.

On Jul 1, 2:27 am, "Tom Ferguson"  wrote:
> 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.
> tom.ms...@2547gmail.com (remove the numerals). I will forward them later in
> the week (vacation time for them now).
>
> "grammatim"  wrote in message
> news:3091fcbe-6ac6-41b2-986d-3c3d0ac50d07@k37g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
> On Jun 30, 12:18 am, Character <C...@cters.bold.italic> wrote:

> > grammatim wrote:
> > > 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.
>
> > > 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?
>
> > 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 -

grammatim wrote:


> 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

On Jul 2, 12:10 pm, Character <C...@cters.bold.italic> wrote:
> grammatim wrote:
> > 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.

grammatim wrote:

> On Jul 2, 12:10 pm, Character <C...@cters.bold.italic> wrote:
> 
>>grammatim wrote:
>>
>>>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

On Jul 2, 2:49 pm, DOsser <Dos...@nodoze.tonight> wrote:
> grammatim wrote:
> > On Jul 2, 12:10 pm, Character <C...@cters.bold.italic> wrote:
>
> >>grammatim wrote:
>
> >>>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!