Non-roman and Transcriber

[Matthew Toulmin]

Re: Non-roman and TranscriberDear Nick and list,

I also am unable to use my keyboard software (Tavultesoft Keyman) for entry into Transcriber. I sent an email describing the problem to the developers of Transcriber but received no reply.

I tried several options, none of which I found satisfactory:
1) using standard but to me unnecessary characters like $@ etc. as substitutes for less standard ones that I need like [ɔ, ʈ, etc.], and doing a find/replace in the .trs file using a Unicode compliant program like Word. However, after changing the .trs file in this way it would no longer open in Transcriber. This sounds like what you describe Nick.
2) having both Word and Transcriber open at once; listening in TR, entering data in Word, copying the text and pasting it into Transcriber. I found this worked but was inefficient.
3) Using the Bindings in Transcriber to replace keystrokes with my intended character. This involved entering my keyboard setup into the Transcriber Bindings dialogue box. This was suggested to me by someone on this list. I tried it, it worked, I emailed the list and said so. Then lo! and behold! I reopened transcriber a few days later and found all my unicode characters that I had so carefully entered into the Bindings box had all turned to boxes! All lost! I tried again ... same result. So the moral of the story is: the bindings approach works as long as you don't shut the program (I can't remember whether or not I lost the Unicode characters when I changed transcription file). I found the idea of reinstalling all the Bindings every time I open the program tedious. I had ticked all the Unicode boxes that I could find within the program and could see no reason why it should have lost all my Bindings entries.

I am not a unicode expert and at this point I gave up on Transcriber for my purposes. As far as I can tell it is not really Unicode compliant in a robust sense.
I'd love to hear otherwise from someone.

Matthew


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Nicholas Thieberger 
  To: RNLD 
  Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 10:13 AM
  Subject: Re: Non-roman and Transcriber


  I am having trouble getting Unicode characters displaying in Transcriber on a Mac. I have followed Matthew's instructions, changed the text encoding to UTF-8, changed the font to Gentium, but still can't insert the characters.


  I have a defined keyboard layout using Ukelele which works with other applications.


  When I try inserting the Unicode character into the .trs file and opening it in Transcriber it generates an error.


  Has anyone figured out how to do this?


  Thanks,


  Nick






    Dear list,

    Thanks to Rachel Cross, I stand corrected. Non-roman characters can be inputed in Transcriber by attributing shortcuts to certain keystrokes.

    Instructions are at: http://trans.sourceforge.net/en/usermanUS.php#r53
    See especially  6.7. Accented characters and internationalization
    and  13.1. Define a shortcut

    This has solved my problem, I am now able to enter both Phonetic and Bengali characters using this method. (Remember to change the font)

    Admittedly this solution is not ideal, as I have to recreate my Keyboard layout with keystrokes, and the shortcut coding is not as flexible as Keyman because Keyman allows dummy keys.

    Doug Marmion suggested I also test ELAN. I downloaded it and found that it DOES accept my Keyman keyboard, so I could be using that with my normal method of character entry. For now I'll stick with Transcriber until my understanding of ELAN catches up.

    Thanks to all respondents. 

    Matthew



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