Norman Font and CSX+ Font for Windows 1995/1998/2000/XP (fwd)

[Andrew Glass]

On the subject of fonts, Indologists using Windows ME/2000/XP and/or
Word 1997/2000/XP (even on Windows 95 and 98), or almost any editor or
word processor under the GNU/Linux or BSD operating systems, should
consider using Unicode as the encoding method for their files, and use a
Unicode font.  Unicode offers considerable advantages over earlier
methods for encoding diacritics in Indological transliteration.
Foremost among these is that unicode has dedicated code points for all
of the diacritics needed for the transliteration of Indian texts.
Thus, files that use a mixture of European and Indological diacritics
need only use one font for everything.  Also, Unicode in
contradistinction to CSX+ or Norman, is an internationally agreed-upon
standard, and is very well supported by the current generation of Web
browsers (e.g. Mozilla 1.x, Netscape 7, and Internet Explorer 6). This
means that Sanskrit transliteration can be displayed on a web page
with correct diacritics without requiring a visitor to download and
install a custom font - one can use any of the default unicode fonts
that came with the operating system.  Almost all email programs now
support unicode, too, so it is also possible to send transliterations
of Sanskrit text in email.  (One just needs to find out how to input
them: we provide solutions to that on our webpages, for Windows and
GNU/Linux or BSD respectively, addresses at the foot of the email).

However, at this point the standard Serif fonts supplied with
Windows do not include all of the diacritics needed for Sanskrit
transliteration: particularly the retroflexes are missing.  (GNU/Linux
and BSD do not suffer from this to quite the same degree: their included
and widely used bitmaps fonts cover the whole range of
Indological diacritics.)  There are now several font options for
Indologists interested in using unicode:

   1.  The Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project's Gandhari Unicode font.
   This font is based on the original URW+ Postscript fonts donated to
   the free software community, has been extended to display the
   special diacritics necessary for Gandhari and comes with Roman,
   Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic styles. It contains more than 700
   glyphs including all diacritics used for Indological transliteration and
   European languages as well as modern Greek, IPA and a complete set
   of Indologically relevant Unicode combining diacritics.  An input
   method for Microsoft Word is provided, as well as a system-wide
   Windows input method so that users can type Unicode characters
   directly into email, databases, spread sheets, etc.  This latter
   input method will work with any of the unicode fonts listed in this
   email.  Gandhari Unicode is free and open source software: it is
   licensed under the GNU General Public License
   (http://depts.washington.edu/ebmp/software.html)

   2. URW+ Palladio UNI.  This 16-bit Unicode TrueType font includes
   all diacritics defined by ISO 15919 (Transliteration of Indic
   Scripts covering all ancient and modern languages of India).  It
   also includes all diacritics for Western, Central, and Eastern
   European languages so that this font can be used by Indologist
   using pretty much any European language.
   (http://home.t-online.de/home/ulrich.stiehl/polfonts.htm#UNI)

   3. Titus Cyberbit Basic.  This font includes, among other
   characters, a (nearly) complete set of Korean, Japanese, and
   Chinese characters.  Bold and Italic variants of this font are not
   yet available.  The font has a size of about 13 MB.  N.B.: The font
   does not provide full coverage of Latin diacritics, Ancient Greek,
   Armenian, Georgian and the like.
   (http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/indexe.htm?/unicode/unitest2.htm)

Other utilities:

   4. John Smith provides tools for converting your existing files
   with CSX+ encoding to Unicode from his web site.
   (ftp://bombay.oriental.cam.ac.uk/pub/john/software/programs/README)

   5. James Kass has much unicode related information and many links
   on his site.  (http://home.att.net/~jameskass/)

   6. For users of Windows XP and/or Office XP, the Early Buddhist
   Manuscripts Project has developed an input method for Unicode
   Devanagari.  This input method allows the user to enter text using
   the same conventions as for transliteration and the computer will
   display the corresponding text in Devanagari including correct
   conjuncts.  Currently, the most convenient and aesthetically pleasing
   font to use with this input method is the Arial Unicode OpenType font,
   included with Office XP.
   (http://depts.washington.edu/ebmp/downloads/Devanagari.exe)

Andrew Glass
Stefan Baums

http://staff.washington.edu/asg/
http://students.washington.edu/baums/

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dominik Wujastyk" <ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK>
To: <INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk>
Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2002 6:42 AM
Subject: Norman Font and CSX+ Font for Windows 1995/1998/2000/XP (fwd)


> -- Forwarded message --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Norman Font and CSX+ Font for Modern Releases of Windows and Word
> 
> Besides the new CSX+ font, which is now fully compatible with modern
> Windows (95/98/ME/2000/XP) and modern Word (1997/2000/XP), a similar
> new font for K.R.Norman encoding is now downloadable from this site:
> 
>   http://home.t-online.de/home/ulrich.stiehl/polfonts.htm
> 
> Ulrich Stiehl, Heidelberg
>