Displaying IPA

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Kevin Hawkins wrote:

> > Can anyone tell me how one can access the IPA, using Word? Thank
> > you.
>
> Though IPA fonts will work fine, you can also use the IPA characters
> included in Unicode, the universal character set on the brink of
> widespread acceptance in most all software major software.  If you
> have Office 2000 or 2002, most all the IPA symbols you should need
> are included in the Arial Unicode MS font.  You can get to them
> through the "insert special characters" option on the menu.  Note
> that diacritical marks are usually separate characters that should
> be inserted directly following the character to which they are
> "attached".
>
> You can find out about downloading Unicode fonts for Windows at
> http://www.hclrss.demon.co.uk/unicode/fonts.html (for other
> operating systems, see
> <http://www.hclrss.demon.co.uk/unicode/index.html>). From there
> you can download Arial Unicode MS and many others.

The Insert | Symbol option is useful, but users should be aware of a
couple of things:

1. If you only need to insert a symbol occasionally, fine, but if you
need to use the IPA extensively, you will want to streamline the task.
There may be keyboard drivers out there already set up -- if so, other
subscribers will doubtless tell us. But let's assume for the moment that
you really only need a handful of "funny letters." In that case, it is
probably most practical to set up keyboard shortcuts: Insert | Symbol,
select the symbol you are interested in, and click the "Shortcut Key..."
button. Enter the keystroke combination you prefer, and if it is in use,
Word will tell you.

2. Word has issues with searching for symbols once you have entered
them. Suppose you realize that you have been entering g-caron instead of
g-micron, and you want to search and replace them. Good luck! For an
interesting thread discussing this issue, point your browser to
<http://segate.sunet.se/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0203D&L=LANTRA-L&D=0&P=15769>.
In the button bar at the top of the page, the third and fourth buttons
are "previous in topic" and "next in topic."

3. I find Character Map easier to work with in terms of being able to
find and actually see the characters I want (Word's little version is
tiny; fortunately, it preserves the same order of characters and you can
limit it to a subset just as you can with the real Character Map). But
if you paste a character or a character string from Character Map into a
Word 2000 document, Word will append a "Normal" paragraph mark after
your pasted string. :-( But if you then select and copy the material you
do want, without the paragraph mark, Word will handle that correctly.

--
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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