Two Language Fonts in Styles?

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Targuman
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Two Language Fonts in Styles?

Post by Targuman »

NWP 3.0

Warning: A lot my own ignorance of fonts and unicode here...

I updated all my styles to a publisher's font required for printing (Brill). In Style Sheet view I just selected all and changed the font to "Brill." All is fine. THEN I noticed that all my Hebrew/Aramaic now displays as a large ugly, blocky font. Changing just the Hebrew text to "Times New Roman" gives me the Hebrew look that I want.

Is there a way to specify in Styles which font I want NW to use for each language?
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phspaelti
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Re: Two Language Fonts in Styles?

Post by phspaelti »

There is no way to tell a single style that "these characters should be in font A and those characters in font B".

But (what I think) is the better way to handle such situations is to create "language" character styles. So in your case you could create a character style "Hebrew", and attach the language and font specification to that. Since "Hebrew" is fairly well defined by its script, it should also be easy to search for Hebrew and apply such a style after the fact, but otherwise I would use these styles at input time.

Generally using language specific styles also allows you attach other language specific behavior, such as spelling, or choice of keyboard.

Just to be clear, there is a language attribute, and you should always mark your languages with the correct one. But what I am recommending is to do this indirectly via a language character style, that includes the language attribute (and the font as necessary) as part of its definition.
philip
Targuman
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Re: Two Language Fonts in Styles?

Post by Targuman »

Thanks Philip. I have wondered about the Character Style and why it is needed rather than, say simply "bold" (which is all "Strong" is). I realize you can do far more complicated things with it and some may do so, perhaps this is my answer...

I cannot see how to associate a keyboard with the Character Style. When I type now I simply hit my key-command to swap keyboards to Hebrew and keep typing. Would I need two steps, key-command for character style and for Keyboard (and then back again)? Or can the keyboard be put into as well? (I cannot find it, if possible.)
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phspaelti
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Re: Two Language Fonts in Styles?

Post by phspaelti »

Actually the keyboard is associated with the language attribute. You should go to Preferences > Language, then choose the language. Then you can set dictionaries, and preferred keyboard settings as appropriate for the language. Font behavior can also be set there. So depending on how you work just setting the language attribute might be sufficient, and then you don't need to use the character style.

There are also two schools of thought on switching style/language attribute vs. switching keyboard. I think it may be possible to set things so that keyboard "drags" language attribute. But generally I think it is preferable to switch style/language, since it is more general. Many languages do not require a switch in keyboard. Obviously you can set shortcuts to the style (or language attribute) to make switching easy.
philip
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martin
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Re: Two Language Fonts in Styles?

Post by martin »

Philip explained the options nicely here, but I'll just throw my hat in and say that I also recommend working through character styles whenever possible. Your character styles can govern everything else, eg: keyboard, language, font, etc.

As Philip said, you can have a character style like "Hebrew" control everything for you. You'd assign that style a keyboard shortcut so you can easily switch to it. Just setup the character style to enforce the desired language and whatever font you like. Your Nisus Writer language preferences can ensure the Hebrew language also swaps your keyboard layout.
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