3.906 Sanskrit diacritics (67)
Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca)
Fri, 5 Jan 90 20:41:37 EST
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 906. Friday, 5 Jan 1990.
Date: Fri, 5 Jan 90 09:21
From: Wujastyk <UCGADKW@EUCLID.UCL.AC.UK>
Subject: Sanskrit diacritics
John McRae asks about Sanskrit diacritics on an IBM PS/2, with
Word 5.0 and a 24 pin Proprinter. I have solutions for 90% of
this situation, and am happy to share.
My solution is pretty simple: I have two bitmaps, one for and EGA
screen, and one for a 24 pin matrix printer, each of which has the
necessary diacritics for Sanskrit (but not double accents for Vedic).
I have avoided changing the French and German characters in the
screen fonts, so you can intermix these languages too. But something
had to go to the block, and I sacrificed the Greek/math characters.
The first version of my stuff was done with the Duke University Language
Toolkit, and I strongly advise you to get a copy of this. Send a couple
of diskettes to them and tell them what hardware you have. Later, I came
across a nicer screen font editor than FED, called E!FONT, and I now use
that if I want to adjust the screen font; I also uke the E!FONT loader
to load my screen font (SAN.VGA) into the VGA card, although the Duke
loader (LOADFONT) is quite okay too. Duke's FED is a good tool for
the printer font, though.
My printer font was designed for the Toshiba P321SL, but I don't suppose
that makes any difference at all. What you will need, though, is a
program from Duke to convert the 24 pin font from the output of FED
into the input for your Proprinter. I can supply a MS Word 5.0
.PRD file that supports my Toshiba, and you can probably print it out
(after ascii-fication) and use it as a basis for modifying your
Proprinter .PRD file.
I use the same screen font with XyWrite, and I can let you have my
keyboard file for that, if you like. I understand that XyWrite
control files are obey all the same rules as NotaBene. I don't have
a .PRN file for the printer font, for XyWrite, since I use XyWrite
on a machine with an HP LaserJet ser. II. But I have a printer file
for the HP LJ, of course, which translates the diacritic characters
into superscripted hyphens, under dots, and so on. The results are not
quite as tidy as having a proper downloadable font for the HP, but
they are fine for letter writing and other non-published material. I
must do a downloadable HP font someday; it's not hard.
Let me know if you would like any of this stuff, and if so, whether
you can deal with xxencoded ZIP files. Or send a disk.
Dominik
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Dominik Wujastyk, | Janet: wujastyk@uk.ac.ucl.euclid
Wellcome Institute for | Bitnet/Earn/Ean/Uucp: wujastyk@euclid.ucl.ac.uk
the History of Medicine, | Internet/Arpa/Csnet: dow@wjh12.harvard.edu
183 Euston Road, | or: wujastyk%euclid@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
London NW1 2BP, England. | Phone: London 387-4477 ext.3013
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