Non English Characters

farss wrote on 12/19/2008, 2:39 PM
Recent project I wanted to add a Hindi / Bengali title. Thankfully I found the title on a web site, copy and paste and I should be done but no such luck. Paste into Word works, forget Vegas, DVDA or PS.
Eventually solved this by Saving As PDF out of Word then dropping that into PS and saving that as PNG to use in DVDA and in the DVD label as a graphic.

I'm not totally new to this, we've done titles in Chinese, even have a Chinese keyboard. However there's something more to this that I can't get my head around. Yes I installed a suitable font for the Hindi but all apps apart from Word just don't 'get' this copied text. I'm pretty certain if I typed it in it would work but that's not a path I want to go down, Chinese was enough of a struggle.

I've done a bit of research on this area and that's left me more confused than I was to start with. Perhaps someone understands the key issues, it seems like some fonts are more devious than others. A simple example is I managed to handle chinese using any of the MS fonts (which are pretty horrid) however none of the better looking ones work, period. At times for titles I did them by having a scribe write them with pen and ink and scanning that. This really is the only way to get good looking chinese I know however it'd still be nice to be able to use the better fonts plus most chinese scribes can only write in one style, well only the ones that'll work for free.

Bob.

Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 12/19/2008, 6:22 PM
I assume you Googled and found sites similar to this:

Hindi Font

The Windows font model was based on, I think, on the modern latin alphabet. Over the years, other alphabet systems have been "attatched" to Windows, such as Cyrillic or Hebrew. Once you go to these alphabets, I am not sure exactly what modifications to Windows is required, but I think you have to do more than simply add the font to the Windows font folder.
Coursedesign wrote on 12/19/2008, 6:36 PM
I have a few years of experience with Devanagari (the alphabet used for Sanskrit and Hindi) on Windows and OS X.

OS X and Linux support Devanagari out of the box. Windows XP is a bit more work:

Complex text support needs to be manually enabled.

If the above is not sufficient for you to do what you want, go to Linguist Software. This company has great font products and outstanding support, as well as tons of deep information on their web site that will give you some appreciation for what people have had to go through to get these alphabets to work (there used to be a lot of typesetting application issues, with the latest releases it's pretty good but not perfect for everything).

Your problems outside of Word are probably related to Unicode support (or rather lack of full support for it).

LaserHindi is a non-Unicode font that may be what you need for Hindi.

LaserBengali should take care of what you need for Bengali.

If you want to be sure your particular setup and usage will work OK, call the company and ask for Windows support. They have always been very helpful when I have called with complex questions.

farss wrote on 12/19/2008, 7:09 PM
Thanks John.

I don't want to input (as in type the text in) and I'm pretty certain I've already "installed files for complex scripts...." but I shall check this again.

You might be able to help me with a very specific question. Here's a link to the title I'm copying:

http://www.boi-mela.com/BookDet.asp?BookID=7301

The second character in the first word has me stumped, all the rest are exactly the same as in client's printed program. That one character is the exact mirror image of what's on that page. I can fudge it in PS easily enough however I'm curious as to why it's being used that way.

Thanks again.

Bob.
Coursedesign wrote on 12/19/2008, 8:02 PM
By "second character in the first word" do you mean in the Reader's Review? Or in the book title?


farss wrote on 12/19/2008, 9:19 PM
Book title. "Noti"

Bob.
Coursedesign wrote on 12/19/2008, 11:23 PM
The "noti" part of the title as shown on the Boi Mela web page looks OK on my system (but see below!).

If the first half (~"ta") of the second syllable ("ti") was mirror-imaged so that the letter part that looks like a lower case "b" had the bubble on the left side of the stem, I don't think it would be correct.

The reason I'm waffling a bit is that I don't know Bengali. Bengali is derived from Sanskrit, but it doesn't use the alphabet the same way.

farss wrote on 12/19/2008, 11:40 PM
"Bengali is derived from Sanskrit,"

that would explain somethings I think.
I'll bounce this of the Bengalis, they'll probably say it doesn't matter but I like to get things right.

Bob.
Coursedesign wrote on 12/20/2008, 6:54 AM
English also has Sanskrit roots, although in a slightly different way.

As you may have noticed, we don't use the same alphabet :O).

And English is a super-mongrel with an immense number of words borrowed from other languages, particularly from French, and earlier Germanic languages.

But English and Sanskrit are both classified as Indo-European languages, and it's easy to find common words even today.

Sir William Jones said in 1786:
The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.

About a hundred years later than that, Western linguists started thinking about "grammar," and of course thought that they were doing original scientific work.

But it was later found that about 500 BC, an Indian scientist named Panini wrote a comprehensive Sanskrit Grammar. This was the beginning of the Science of Grammar, and in the foreword he wrote, "We study grammar so that the language may open itself up to us like a loving wife to her husband."

Hearing that, new grammarians immediately came running...