SYMBOLS

[Justin McBride]

Jimm,

The UTF-8 characters you sent came through just fine on my email client.  But if you're using a program such as Outlook Express, like me, once you change your email encoding to UTF-8, I've found that switching from Edit View to Source View or Preview View completely destroys the Unicode characters.  Also be aware that not all Unicode characters are created equal.  Some fonts, such as MS Arial Unicode, have what looks to be the whole Unicode set, from the extremely rare to the everyday.  Some, though, such as Times New Roman, only have particular portions of it, and instead default to other more specialized fonts when some of the rarer Unicode symbols are used.  So, for instance, I'm typing here in the sans serif font Arial, but when I use the superscript n, ⁿ, you'll notice that it has serifs on it.  Why?  It's because Arial has a slot for that character, and even accepts its entry, but doesn't actually have that character within its set (at least not when used in Outlook Express)  That brings up another point.  Different Microsoft applications handle Unicode placement differently.  So, you get a series of strange happy face and musical symbols in the absolute lowest Unicode ranges on, say, MS Excel, but just squares and blanks on MS Word.  Likewise, you can paste a huge string of Unicode characters into Outlook Express directly from Word, and only some will come through.  There are also several different varieties of the Unicode, based on how many bits are used to code for the character.  It can get pretty confusing the further into the technology you delve.

You may recall that my paper for last year's Siouan Conference (SIOUAN LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION IN THE AGE OF .MP3, UNICODE, AND XML)  dealt briefly with placement of Unicode characters.  Sadly, I was never able to get to the copier before the weekend was up at Billings, so no one got a copy of my paper, but here is an excerpt from it that you may find useful:
  I have found that keying in lengthy texts is made much easier by the use of a Unicode-compatible font containing all the necessary characters and a virtual keyboard to generate them in as few keystrokes as possible.  Unicode is an international character standard with “a unique [code] number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language,” as well as space available for private character development (Unicode, Inc., 2006).  Users can use the Unicode to produce a bewildering variety of arcane characters, such as ề, ʢ, and ȣ, without having to change fonts.  It is, however, a font-dependent technology.  I tend to prefer the fonts Arial Unicode MS, Lucida Sans Unicode, (which come prepackaged with Microsoft Office and Windows, respectively), and Gentium (available for free at www.sil.org), each of which has its own special uses but is perfectly capable of capturing Siouan.  I use Tavultesoft Keyman 6.0 to access my Siouan Unicode keyboard on the fly (both are freely available at www.languagegeek.com).  These latter tools take some getting used to, but now I can generate Kansa technical spellings only slightly slower than I can type English.

  The benefits of digital text are obvious:  It can be easily generated, copied, edited, searched, or otherwise processed.  It can be lifted from one application and dropped into another with minimal discomfort.  Furthermore, the files themselves can be renamed or organized as needed.  There are a variety of text files and formats to choose from, and even the most basic plain text editors (such as the standard Notepad or TextEdit programs that come prepackaged with new PCs or Macintosh models, respectively) are now Unicode-compatible with slight nudging from the user.  
I hope this helps, and that all is well with you and your family.  Oh, and thanks again for the postcard of Bruce Cass.  I hung it up in my office window facing the hall, so that visitors to the building can see it before they come in my office.

-Justin McBride
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jimm GoodTracks 
  To: Steve Ellsworth 
  Cc: Jimm ThigrePi ; Patt ; RuEBEN AxeweHu 
  Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 11:34 AM
  Subject: SYMBOLS


  Steve:
  Instead of working on my IOM Dictionary entries, I waste this morning time exploring the pre-MS-Vista Menus" tab.  And I think "What is different now on my old classic menu.  

  So interestingly, I find under "Menus" >Insert > Symbols > More Symbols.....Letters for the prominent alphabets of the world, i.e., Latin, Greek-Coptic, Russian, Arabic, and misc. drawing lines, and other stuff I am not recognizing, ....and then this...  
  the glottal stop and the enge (elongated tailed "n"), which I am printing below this line to see if they make it to your PC.
  ˀηŋ 
  These same symbols above and those alphabets used to be in the font character maps under the previous system.  Perhaps they still are, but I am not checking it out now.   
  There in the maps, they showed keying in code(s) and how to make a short key insert which I never attempted.  What is significant here IS...

  They are listed as "Unicode".  In short, this is a world wide font set to eliminate the world wide problem we've experienced locally, namely, using a set of fonts with accented (stressed) vowels and various special character fonts in the course of our document files, sending those files to another PC user, who receives them corrupted or with a substituted font such as the deutsche esetz (spelling?), i.e., the German letter for a double "s", as in "Nuss (nut)".

  Let me know if these arrive on your PC, as I am using the MENUS tab you place on the PC yesterday.  If you receive them, it will be a phenomenal achievement for self, Rueben, and other assistants in the various Siouan Languages Prograns, and the double benefit will more be to enable more easily the requirement of DEL/ NSF/ ANA grants, and allow us to eliminate the need  to transfer the Siouan Font files among ourselves.  Well, at least for Ioway, Otoe-Missouria, anyway, and perhaps, Hochank/ Winnebago.
  Jimm

  P.S.:  I am drawing my conclusions above based on my general abilities to accomplish the needs of my lexicology and bilingual texts projects, and without a clue  to the implications and interfacing of the many vintages of PCs out there, and in particular, our MSWord/ Office '98-2003 applications with the recent MSVista Word/ Office.  
  To date, I am aware of your counsel to avoid the automatic Vista extension added on to saved. doc files, which would preclude other PC users being able to open attached .doc files, and the fact of the loss of certain functions under the new Vista tabs.
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