Word processing

[Robert J. Zydenbos]

> we are planning to switch from DOS to Windows (95) for our
> publication projects. Currently we are working with WordPerfect 5.1
> (DOS) using the fonts and keyboard drivers of Prof. Emmerick.
> A ttf-font and keyboard layout (Caraka) is also available for
> WordPerfect vor Windows. Are there other systems recommendable esp.
> for Word for Windows?

Dr. Smith has made beautiful freeware fonts from Austria available
on his Cambridge ftp site earlier, in both TrueType and Postscript
versions and in two coding schemes: Norman and CSX.

The advantage of Norman coding is that a few signs which are
necessary for transliterating Dravidian are there, which are
missing in CSX. (Some users argue that CSX is better because it was
designed for use on PCs, but I do not notice any advantage and have
therefore never understood the argument.) Dr. Shivamurthy
Shivacharya intends to bring out an extended version of these
Austrian fonts which contains all the signs necessary for literary
Dravidian.

To facilitate the use of these fonts (and of (La)TeX) I have
written a program that takes a text file and makes the necessary
substitutions, starting from one of the transliteration systems in
use on the Indology List. This program can be used with an input
file in ASCII or in RTF format (a common option in all the better
word processors). If you are interested, I can give you (or anyone
else who is interested) the executable program for use with OS/2 or
DOS, along with instructions on how to use it.

RZ