Arabic-L:GEN:METimes Responses

Thu Dec 16 22:44:13 UTC 1999

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Arabic-L: Thu 16 Dec 1999
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-------------------------Directory-------------------------------------

1) Subject: METimes Response from the creater of METimes
2) Subject: METimes Response
3) Subject: METimes Response
4) Subject: METimes Response

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1)
Date: 16 Dec 1999
From: Christopher Buck <chrisbuck at peaknet.net>
Subject: METimes Response

Dear Dr. Parkinson:

Brent Poirier has informed me of your interest in an academic
transliteration font I developed, New World Transliterator.

METimes was an old Type 3 transliteration font for the Mac. It was very
good. However, as font technology developed, I ran into some problems with
METimes. In 1990, as a graduate student , I tried to convert my
professor's METimes to a Type 1 font, using a new font converter utility
called Evolution. That didn't work, because METimes turned out to be a
"stroked" font, digitally drawn with a number of tangential, intersecting
lines, rather than with bezier curves (used in Type 1 font) or by means of
quadratics (TrueType fonts). I then contacted the programmer of
Evolution--Greg Berry of Image Club Graphics--and it was Berry who
taught me the black art of digital typography.

Since there were no Type 1 or TrueType versions of METimes back in
1990, I decided to develop New World for the Mac. (I was writing my
Master's thesis at that time; necessity was thus the mother of the invention
of New World.) Later, in response to a number of requests by colleagues
using PCs, I created a version for Windows, New World WinMac.

I've had two books published in New World: [1] _Symbol and Secret:
Qur'an Commentary in Baha'u'llah's Kitab-i Iqan_. Studies in the Babi and
Baha'i Religions, vol. 7 (Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1995); and [2]
_Paradise and Paradigm: Key Symbols in Persian Christianity and the
Baha'i Faith_ (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999). The
font has been reviewed twice:

                Brannon Wheeler, Review of New World Transliterator.
                Religious Studies Review 24.4 (Oct. 1998): 385.

                Kevin Reinhart, "New World Transliterator:
                Macintosh Middle Eastern-Language Transliteration Font
                by Christopher Buck."
                Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 27 (1993): 294.

Kazi Books uses New World as a house font. A number of Islamicists have
been using New World for several years now, as have several universities
(Utrecht, Harvard Library, and others that escape my memory right now,
with Dartmouth University soon to be requesting a site license, I'm told).

White Cloud Press has just published Michael Sells' translation of the
early Meccan suras of the Qur'an. This book was typeset in another font I
developed, called Dominion.

Anyway, the news is that I have released New World Transliterator (Mac
version) as a shareware font. It can now be downloaded at the following
URL:

<http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive/Archive/edu/lang/new-world-tra
nsliterator.hqx

Please share this information with your listserve members, and post on
related Arabic, Turkish, Persian and other academic sites as well. Thank
you, and please copy these postings to me, if you would be so kind!

The Windows version of New World and Dominion for the Mac may be
ordered privately by contacting me at my academic address below.

I will be upgrading New World over the Christmas holidays, as soon as
Kevin Reinhart gives me Apple's specifications for the Turkish keyboard.
This means that I will be remapping certain characters to make the font
even more Turkish-friendly. New World supports Persian (including
Encyclopaedia Iranica's idiosyncratic transliteration convention!), as well
as Syriac, some simple conventions of Hebrew, not to mention Sanskrit,
Pali, Sumerian, and Japanese!

Hope this helps.

Christopher Buck

--
Dr. Christopher Buck
Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Theology
Quincy University
1800 College Avenue
Quincy, IL  62301-2699
chrisbuck at peaknet.net
buckch at quincy.edu
drchristopherbuck at usa.net
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2)
Date: 16 Dec 1999
From: Brent Poirier <mariposa at roadrunner.com>
Subject: METimes Response

Here is Christopher Buck's contact information:

Dr. Christopher Buck
Visiting Assistant Professor of
Religious Studies and Theology
Quincy University
1800 College Avenue
Quincy, IL  62301-2699
chrisbuck at peaknet.net

Brent Poirier

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3)
Date: 16 Dec 1999
From: "T.A. MCALLISTER" <ecl6tam at lucs-01.novell.leeds.ac.uk>
Subject: METimes Response

Dear Carmen,

I can't speak for Win 95 or 98, but under NT, the normal version of
Times New Roman, Arial, etc are Unicode fonts, so perhaps no special
font is needed to transliterate Arabic. (At least, they look and behave
like Unicode fonts on my PC ...  :-)

They contains the macronned vowels in their normal Unicode places, in
the "Latin Extended A" positions. Those can be inserted by either
Word For Windows's (97) "Insert ... Symbol ... (normal font)" or with
the Character Map.

There are characters with dots beneath them, under "Latin Extended
Additional", but they are all vowels, so most are no use to you.

However, there are no fewer than 15 consecutive free-standing dots
with no advance-width, i.e. when you insert any one of them the cursor
doesn't move and the dot appears beneath the previous character. They
are at minutely different distances to the left of the cursor, so you can
pick the one that goes exactly under the centre of whichever character
you have just typed. They are in the "Private Use Area" shortly after the
symbols that look like playing-card clubs, diamonds, etc.

There is also a single free-standing dot at Unicode 0323, in "Combining
Diacritical Marks".

It is tedious to insert these characters/diacritics with Character Map or
Insert ... Symbol, so my recommendation is to use the latter, but to
click on the "Shortcut Key" button and to define a shortcut key
mapping for each one that you need. Not all keys can be used for this,
so you'll have to experiment, but it is wise to avoid keys that might be
needed for other things anyway. I use Control plus asterisk, forward-
slash, etc on the Number Pad, so there is no chance of hitting the
chosen keys accidentally.

You can define such shortcuts to be stored either in your
NORMAL.DOT (which makes them available to any Word doc on that
machine) or in whichever file you are typing at the time (which makes
them more portable, but you have to define them again for subsequent
files).

Someone recently showed me a font called Times New Arabic
(filename TRANSLIT0.TTF). I don't want to insult its makers, but it
looks very suspicious to me. The dots and macrons are placed in the 7-
bit ASCII range, which is something that Monotype very rarely does. It
contains the statement that it is copyright Monotype (which of course
Times New Roman is), but the font appeared to have been made with
Fontographer version 3.5. That is a fine program for individual font-
makers such as me, but I rather suspect that Monotype use more
sophisticated proprietary software. In other words, I suspect that this
font might be an illegal rip-off of TNR. I have queried this with
Monotype but have not yet received a reply. It might be wise to avoid
this font until the matter is cleared up. If anyone can give reliable
information about Times New Arabic, I would be very grateful.

Of course, if all else fails, you can download the Translit font from my
WWW page (URL below). That font is completely non-standard, ugly,
clumsy, amateurish and altogether horrible. In fact, its only discernable
virtue is that it is free of charge for academic use ...  :-)
I welcome suggestions about improving it.

All the best.

Alec.

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4)
Date: 16 Dec 1999
From: Srpko Lestaric <srpkole at EUnet.yu>
Subject: METimes Response

Hi Carmen,
If you would mind for (Z)DMG system of transliteration (the very best one in
my opinion), visit http://accurapid.com/journal/ ; after that go to
/11plea.htm. There you can download a font of TmsRoman family, easy to use,
with a short manual, free of charge. It is for MS Windows/MS Word.
Srpko

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End of Arabic-L: 16 Dec 1999