Ms. problem

I have a lengthy paper (representing almost 10+ years of on-off work) on an
Austronesian language that may or may not be publishable. There are some
problems of a computer nature:

1. The original was composed in WordPerfect8; some portions transfer to Word
2000 with only minor problems; but the main portion, an 80+ page
wordlist/dictionary in 2-column format with lots of "special characters",
comes out quite screwy.  I will try first, eliminating the column format--
that worked for the file version of the Kash dict. (I could re-install WP,
but IIRC WP files are often unreadable on many computers.)

The idea of retyping the major part isn't appealing, but probably necessary,
since recently discovered refs. require a fair amount of revision.
Incidentally the whole thing totals 1192kb (130+pp. single-spaced); adding
revisions and a bibliog. will increase that.

2. If I were to put this on-line, I suspect a .pdf format would be best; my
computer can't create one, so I assume I'll have to buy something from adobe
:-((( Also, I seem to recall from past discussion that publishing things on
the web precludes later print-publication. Is that correct, and does it
apply to pdf's?  If true, then I'd better try peddling it first, but in any
case it will have to be in some readable format.

3. There is also the question of which font to use. The only special
character not available in Times New Roman is glottal stop; I can insert one
from Thryomanes or (ugh) Lucida Sans Unicode, but would that show up
properly in a pdf if the user didn't have that font? There are also
occasional schwas, but there I've used the traditional Indonesianist
e-breve, which TNR has.

3. Any of you (esp. Dirk Elzinga and Tom Wier) who've prepared things for
publication-- any suggestions, tips, advice???  My last experience was in
1990...ah, publish or perish.

Many thanks in advance. Roger