Stress marks: Word, from PC to a Mac

[David Crawford]

Some caveats:

1.  U+0301 is more specifically known as the "combining acute accent" mark;  there is a "non-combining", identical-looking 
character also whose behavior will be different.  The combining diacritic marks are essentially "zero width", i.e. they appear 
over the preceding character after which they are inserted rather than advancing horizontally and occupying its "own character 
space" following the previous character.  Just be sure you're inserting combining marks by whatever method you use.  This also 
goes for graves, umlauts, and some of the OCS squiggles as well, should one venture further afield than just verbal stress for 
Russian.

2.  Make sure whatever font you use is Unicode compliant and has both the combining accents and Cyrillic (a statement of the 
self-evident).  If you stick with the "standards" (i.e. boring, like Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana, etc) you should be OK. 
There are a lot of nice looking Russian fonts around that have never been brought up to full unicode compliance, or don't have 
the combining diacritics.

3.  If you're using Windows fonts, make sure they are up-to-date versions.  Those shipped with Office 2007 and XP did not behave 
well with vertical placement of combining accents, usually placing them way too high on a line of text and thereby forcing an 
increase in spacing between vertically adjacent lines of text.  The resulting look was unacceptable.  If you have either Office 
2010+ or Win7+, you should be OK.  If you observe the symptoms, find someone who does have the up-to-date software, copy their 
ttf/otf files for the fonts you wish to use, and manually install them on your computer, which will over-write the old fonts. 
You've paid for them already, IMHBCO, but MS hasn't been pushing updates for just fonts.

4.  Printing to pdf from MSWord etc has its own set of problems due to rendering of fonts and combining diacritics.  Out of the 
Windows freebies, we've had the best results using BullZip pdf printer.  Microsoft's own pdf printer completely trashed the 
layout even using Times New Roman fonts at last attempt in the Office 2010 era;  I haven't tried it again since Office 2013 
erupted onto the market.

5.  No advice to offer for Mac users, sorry.

FWIW, I can report that Thunderbird mail 31 on Ubuntu 14.04.1 is rendering accented я́блоко correctly.  And, in response to the 
last post, I have fond memories of my brief stay at the GWU dorms en route to Moscow with ACTR, except for the part about food 
poisoning picked up at a nearby eating establishment that took most of the way to Frankfurt from which to recover.  ;-)

dc

On 10/05/2014 04:51 PM, Richard Robin wrote:
> The solution for PCs is Unicode character U+301, acute accent mark. This is a universal accent mark, understood by nearly all
> platforms and nearly all programs (except some Kindle devices), e.g. you should be able to see the accent mark over *я́блоко*.
>

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of
its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under
robber barons than under the omnipotent moral busybodies. The Robber
Baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be
satiated: but those who torment us for our own good will torment us
without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
-- C.S. Lewis

David E. Crawford
Unoccupied Zone, Indian River City, Florida
United States of America
28.51N 80.83W
------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                        http://seelangs.wix.com/seelangs
-------------------------------------------------------------------------