Re: Using Diacritics

MS Word 2000 and probably some other MS products let you
use the hex code of a character, then Alt + X, to insert
the character, for anything higher than ANSI. This is
cumbersome, even more than the traditional Alt + code,
but at least something. For example, you can type "012b",
then Alt + X, and Word erases "012b" and produces a
LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH MACRON (Unicode char 299,
in hexadecimal 012b).

I know of one program (UniPad) that not only handles
Unicode seamlessly but also lets you define virtual
keyboards. For example, you can redefine your keyboard
so that the tilde becomes a "dead key", and then press
tilde, "E", and get the proper character (E with tilde).
This program is downloadable for free, but it seems to
be caught in a permanent alpha version stage. :(

A nice Unicode font that includes all the strange symbols
including the IPA is Gentium (also downloadable -- search
for it). I think the MS free font pack with the WGL4 is no
longer free. And of course there's SILDoulosUnicodeIPA.

For my personal use when generating Web pages, I wrote a
little Python program that searches for anything between
slashes or square brackets, assumes it's XSAMPA, and
translates it to proper IPA, in Unicode. I guess it wouldn't
be a problem to get Word to do that with a macro (of course,
achieving the same as 4 lines of Python code takes several
pages of "high-level" Visual Basic code :).


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.angelfire.com/scifi2/nyh/index.html
  "The future is all around us, waiting, in moments
   of transition, to be born in moments of revelation.
   No one knows the shape of that future or where it
   will take us. We know only that it is always born
   in pain."  -- G'Kar quoting G'Quon, in "Babylon 5"

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