Combining Unicode Characters

February 13, 2006 1:45 AM

Unicode Filter - How do I go about combining diacritics in Unicode with pre-existing letters? I'm baffled. Win XP, using Word. I'm clueless, and I'm working with a deader than the proverbial doornail language (Hint - Middle Eastern Iranian language family).
posted by AArtaud to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

I'm not sure how you'd do this using Word, since I don't think Word allows much kerning control. But ... in InDesign (or another typesetting tool), you can place the diacritic immediately after the letter it works with, and then reduce the kerning on the letter enough so the diacritic is centered above it (or below it, or whatever).

You could try this for Word ... If you don't need the document to change with later edits, you could place the diacritic in an object box and position it manually. In effect, you'd be creating a second layer of text. That's not very elegant, but it could work.
posted by Alt F4 at 4:53 AM on February 13, 2006

This may sound odd, but I'm working at a Help Desk at a university with a lot of dead languages. And to do what you're trying to do, we've found Open Office to work a lot better.

Who knows why!
posted by k8t at 5:00 AM on February 13, 2006

I'm confoozed. Doesn't the input method depend on the IME you're using?
posted by RavinDave at 5:10 AM on February 13, 2006

Are you sure a specific font doesn't exist for that language? The Yamada Center at the University of Oregon has a whole bunch of language-specific fonts. I made great use of their IPA font, but haven't tested their others.
posted by librarina at 8:16 AM on February 13, 2006

Well, I doubt that there is a specific font for Khotanese, except for Apples, and it would be handmade by my ex-advisor.
I have to go back and re-check what characters I need exactly. I need something fairly elegant and use-friendly because I need to be able to search the extant textual corpus, but that's for the suggestions. Open Office sounds like a nice alternative.
posted by AArtaud at 11:12 PM on February 13, 2006