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NWP and Syriac / NWP and other ancient scripts

Posted: 2011-01-17 01:37:07
by pacito
I am fairly new to OS X, and I have been using Mellel because I was told it was the only word processor that rendered Syriac correctly in OS X.

I am considering making the switch to NWP, but I am curious to know if anyone on this forum uses Syriac extensively with NWP, and what their experience has been. In the little looking around I've done I've noted that the Meltho fonts don't work well with the OS X text engine, but that xenotypetech has a syriac language kit that claims to do this well.

For that matter, I would be curious to know more generally how people find NWP works in scholarly writing that makes uses of several different scripts, such as Greek, Coptic, Hebrew, Armenian, Georgian, Arabic, and, how suited NWP might be for the creation of critical editions of ancient texts in different scripts.

many thanks in advance!

Re: NWP and Syriac / NWP and other ancient scripts

Posted: 2011-01-17 07:32:21
by Ruchama
I do not use syriac at all, but I do use hebrew with punctuation. I must say the apple's text engine is very far from being perfect. OSX engineers have neglected badly this aspect of their system. There is very very little progress since OS10.3 (!). In that respect, as an old time loyal user of nisus, it's decision back then in the early days of OSX to use apple engine was a blow.. (sorry Martin..)
I was used to do all my word processing in Nisus (since its early versions until 6.5) but since OSX I must use Mellel, Word for pc and other aids to accomplish simple tasks like punctuation..

I checked non of the languages you mentioned, but I assume that Greek is ok. I don't know about the others.

Re: NWP and Syriac / NWP and other ancient scripts

Posted: 2011-01-17 12:22:55
by Timotheus
For critical editions in the languages you mention you might take a look at Classical Text Editor. Unfortunately it's a Windows application, but of course you can run it on an Intel Mac too, in combination with Parallels Desktop or another similar program.