[1] From: Judy Koren <judyk@techunix.technion.ac.il> (43)
Subject: Re: 9.225 fonts?
>
> Perhaps a Humanist can help with the following problem: I am attempting
> to create a WWW version of an applied linguistics course, with the much
> appreciated help of our Teaching Support Staff. For part of the
> material, we need to be able to use phonetic symbols *incorporated* into
> the text (I realize that .GIF files can create phonetic symbols, but they
> cannot be integrated and also slow everything down). So... if there is
> anyone out there with an idea as to how this can be done, *please* let us
> know... I've been told that it is *impossible*, but would rather not
> believe that before consulting the community of e-scholars...
Well, I've a fair idea how it would be done:
a) Unless you already have a phonetic font for Windows, you need to create
one. There are font editors out there that make this fairly painless;
I've created simple things like transliteration fonts for Arabic based
on a font I already had, and I imagine you'd start with a regular font
and add characters for phonetic symbols. I don't know of font editors
for Windows 'cos I did mine quite a while ago, under DOS, but I'd be
surprised if there weren't any shareware ones around.
b) Put this creation on the Web and include in a prominent place on your
Web page the information that in order to see the characters correctly
it's necessary to download the font and define it to your browser as
the default font to use. Presumably you would give an ftp link from
your Web page to the font to make it easy to download.
This is the way, for instance, that people see Hebrew on the Web: you
can't use the regular Windows Hebrew fonts 'cos Microsoft in its infinite
wisdom decided to handle the right-to-left problem by having Windows
reverse the font; Netscape etc. don't do this, so you see Hebrew backwards
in a Web browser. Solution: the folks at the Hebrew U. in Jerusalem wrote
a Web font that contains regular English and Hebrew that displays properly
in the browser (unfortunately it prints backwards because Windows handles
the printing :-( -- but that's one problem *you* won't have!) Anyone who
wants to see "proper" Hebrew in Web pages can download the font, and the
Jerusalem server makes it impossible not to know about, and easy to download.
What you won't get, though, is the ability to resize fonts and a nice
selection of styles -- unless you're prepared to prepare a load of different
fonts in different sizes and styles.
Hope this helps.
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| Judy Koren, |
| Consultant -- Internet, database and information services |
| P.O.Box 405, Denya, Haifa, Israel 34981. |
| Tel. 972-4-341704 email: judyk@tx.technion.ac.il |
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