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Topic: character insertion into lyric line (Read 4412 times) previous topic - next topic

character insertion into lyric line

I am interested in inserting phonetic characters into the lyric line of foreign language choral pieces. The Alt+ provides me with a few but not enough. What is Unicode, and can it be of use? The character map gives me U+ numbers but I have no idea how to show them. Is this like the 'any' key? Am I missing something here? Will I be able to use these characters in NWC if I eventually figure out how to print them? Please help, I'll never slag you guys again.

Re: character insertion into lyric line

Reply #1 –
It is my understanding that NWC only supports 1-byte fonts, the traditional standard. Although a 1-byte font may have its 256 characters in Unicode positions, true Unicode fonts are 2-byte, allowing 64K characters.

What you can do, without any changes to NWC v.1.75, is what I have done with my "Romital" font, posted in the Scriptorium. With Romital, I used a font editor to jettison un-needed characters from a public domain standard Roman font, then substituted Italic characters of the same typeface. The Romital font allows both non-italic and italic characters (including those with the most common accents) to be used in NWC lyrics. This is because the non-italic and italic characters come from the same font.

If you have access to a font editor (and know how to use it), and if your selection of phonetic characters is not too large, you can do something similar.

There is another alternative: Look at the current thread concerning "Open Office." You can use that tactic to make localized font changes, or even add information, in a WMF exported from NWC print preview.

Re: character insertion into lyric line

Reply #2 –
Of course, if you have a phonetic font (1-byte standard), you can place it as text near the relevant lyrics.

If your phonetic font is 2-byte, you can probably use the WMF technique, and place the phonetics as new text within the word processor (if recent, it may be able to handle 2-byte Unicode fonts).

Re: character insertion into lyric line

Reply #3 –
For the record, Robert is correct. NWC supports single byte characters, but not double byte characters as is done in Unicode.

Re: character insertion into lyric line

Reply #4 –
I don't know what the difference is between a single byte character and a double one, but the basic Microsoft Windows load comes with a number of fonts, if I'm not mistaken.  I just looked at a truetype one called Symbols which seems to use characters from a non-English alphabet.

Try setting up a font like that as userfont1 or userfont2, etc. and see if that might work in the lyric?

Re: character insertion into lyric line

Reply #5 –
Full technical explanation:

Whether a font is 1-byte or 2-bytes refers to the indexing system used to label the characters. A 1-byte font allows 256 characters, a 2-byte fonts allows 64K characters. For example, hex code FF refers to the space character in a 1-byte font.

Until recent times, a font could contain any number of characters. Each character could be called anything at all, and look like anything at all, whether or not it made sense or corresponded to any language or symbol set.

However, only 256 (1-byte) number of characters could be loaded into the system for usage. Some of these were reserved for control codes (such as line break, tab, etc.) and other historical usages dating back to the days of Teletype machines. So, fewer than 256 distinct characters could be used by the system. I believe (but am not sure) that a maximum of 196 characters, not including controls, were accessible.

Some 1-byte fonts had many more than 256 characters, with a capability for choosing which of them would be loaded, depending on circumstances. Such fonts had different "code pages" that would shuffle the characters around, so that (for example) Latin or Greek langauge characters would be assigned within the allowed 256, whereas others would be unassigned. Nevertheless, 1-byte worth of characters (including controls) could be used by the system.

A 1-byte font is more than adequate for most Western European languages, with accented characters and special symbols (such as Spanish inverted question mark). Another 1-byte font, or a different code page, would be more than adequate for Eastern European languages, or for Hebrew, or any language that constructs its words from a small number of alphabetic characters (thanks to the Phoenicians, apparently). A 1-byte symbolic font is more than adequate to include common math symbols, dingbats, and so forth.

But here is the problem: Asian languages do not construct words alphabetically. A 1-byte font cannot express Chinese, nor can it express the large range of characters needed by any large symbolic system.

Enter the 2-byte font. Now, each character is indexed by 2 bytes. The resulting 64K characters is more than adequate for an Asian language, and many other things as well. Since there is a lot of computer work being done in Asia, 2-byte fonts are becoming more common. Even if you do not use Asian ideograms, a 2-byte font allows a lot of room for many variations in the Western languages. For example, ligatures (printed links between certain letters) can now be represented by specific characters, rather than by using software to combine other characters.

The 1-byte fonts do not all comply with a single, standard index system. For example, if someone with a Macintosh sends you a plain-text (*.txt)memo, you can read it in Windows. Non-accented letters and numerals will be the same. But the Mac fonts have, in the past, placed accented vowels in different code locations than Windows fonts, and also used some math symbols that Widnows did not use. So, if the memo were written in French, you would find that some of the letters were missing in Windows. This could be remedied by installing a font that has been index-scrambled to comply with the Mac indexing.

When 2-byte fonts began, someone had the bright idea to set up a universal standard. That's Unicode. Each of the 64K index locations has (or, will eventually have) a standard, context-dependent default descriptor. Of course, you can intentionally not comply with the standard.

A 1-byte font can also comply with Unicode, to the limit of its 256 characters.

That's it. So, why can't NWC handle Unicode fonts? If they are 1-byte, no problem, because the software can deal with it. But if they are 2-byte, the software cannot deal with it, and the *.nwc file format can't handle it.

What can you do? There is little reason for NWC to be reprogrammed for 2-byte fonts. (That's my opinion; NWC may differ.) But you can achieve your effect by using multiple 1-byte fonts.

The real problem, from your perspective, is that the lyrics editor only allows a single font to be used. If a single font does not have all the characters you need, then your only alternatives are to (1) Create a custom font with the characters you need, if there are not too many of them, or (2) Leave some white space in the lyrics, then insert the additional information as "text" with another font, or (3) Export WMFs, then graphically edit them with an external program. (See my other thread regarding Open Office).

Re: character insertion into lyric line

Reply #6 –
Sorry, FF isn't the hex code for space!

Re: character insertion into lyric line

Reply #7 –
If I remember from good-old HTML class, 20 is the hex for space, right?

Re: character insertion into lyric line

Reply #8 –
Thanks loads for the explanation and tips. I think the custom font route is the one I'll be trying. There are only a half dozen extra symbols needed (most can be found in the Greek alphabet) of which 3 can be Alt+'d in the Times New Roman font. However, certain symbols are only available in specialized fonts like Symbols or WP phonetic. What I need to be able to do is lift a symbol from one font and drop it into a NWC friendly font, like Times New Roman. I should have probably mentioned that these lyrics will exist in cyberspace only (part of a choral practise website) and will never necessarily be printed out on real paper. Again thanks for your help and I look forward to whining about something else in the near future.

Re: character insertion into lyric line

Reply #9 –
I should have probably mentioned that these lyrics will exist in cyberspace only [part of a choral practise website] and will never necessarily be printed out on real paper.

Well make sure, then that you make the font available to the people who visit your site if you intend to leave the files in NWC format. Otherwise export them to pdf and embed that font.

Re: character insertion into lyric line

Reply #10 –
(1) F.B.-- Yes, 20 is the hexcode for space. Thaat's why you see %20 inserted in URLs that refer to a file with space in the filename (% being an HTML way to handle that).

(2) I should have mentioned this sooner: There is a non-IPA way to express phonetics using only ASCII (standard keyboard) characters. it's called SAMPA notation. It has been in use for other applications. Check it out:

http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/home.htm

You would not need a special font. You might, however, use my Romital font (in the Scriptorium) to express words in Roman type, and SAMPA phonetics in italics, or vice-versa.

(3) Look in the GNU Ghostscript font set for public-domain fonts that can be re-engineered, both Roman and Greek Symbol. I believe, but am not sure, that the International Phonetics Association (IPA) has a public-domain font that is an incomplete, but useful, subset of their commercially-available fonts.

(4) It is easier for amateurs to cobble together fonts that look good when printed, then it is to cobble fonts that look good on screen.