Anyone see this?

http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=gentium

I downloaded the PDF sample document and it looks to have the dotted-consonants. It's a modern font, but quite beautiful.

Go raibh maith agat as an nasc, a Dheirg. Aontaím leat: is álainn an clófhoireann (font) é.

I love that font...gentium alt is actually prettier, in my thinking, but they're almost identical.

But yes, it is a unicode font which has dotted consonants available (and there are many others...oh yes...lucida grande and times new roman and even more...) but I think the gentium family is the most attractive.

It is actually very specifically what I have in mind when on occasion I suggest resurrecting use of the dot without necessarily resurrecting seancló for common usage.

Since that font is free, and works on Windows and Macs (not sure about Linux) and supports dotted consonants, I wonder if that can be made the default font here, with a fallback to Times Roman?

We could have a dotted-consonant resurrection here. Revolution! ;-)

I hadn't realized it was readable on pcs too. That would make me happier than I could say...

Gentium has been made the default font of the message text of the board, at least for the time being.

It is nicely done.

Caoimhín

(Message edited by Caoimhín on December 09, 2005)

and do the dots work?

Ḃ ḃ Ċ ċ Ḋ ḋ Ḟ ḟ Ġ ġ Ṁ ṁ Ṗ ṗ Ṡ ṡ Ṫ ṫ

Caoimhín, is it normal if I see loads of phonetic symbols in the Gentium font texts, especially instead of the capital letters? It doesn't make them easy to read: ç instead of capital c, Greek beta instead of capital b, and so forth. How can I change that? :-(

I see the font clearly, but how do I go about typing those consonants. I use Windows 98...

Look up the Character table, it should tell you the short cuts.

Also, if you check out Gaelchló - http://www.fainne.org/gaelchlo - the keyboard drivers listed there ought to work

Thanks Aonghus :-)

It didn't work but thanks anyway. This computer's almost as old as I am ;-)

Does Windows 98 support unicode? That may be the problem.

if you're using a mac, Lughaidh, you must set a unicode keyboard layout either US Extended, Irish Extended, etc. Then (with US Extended anyway) you type option+w (which gives you a floating ponc) and then the consonant. I believe Irish Extended is the same.

for pcs I'm unsure, but I'll bet there are some pretty easy instructions out there for every unicode compliant application and operating system.

This may help the Windows 98 problem:

unicows.exe

I haven't tried it so install this .dll at your own risk.

Caoimhín

I have been unable to find alt codes to produce dotted consonants in Gentium.

However, the following HTML entity codes will produce dotted consonants:

Code     Product Description

Ċ     Ċ     Capital C Dot
ċ     ċ     Lower C Dot
Ġ     Ġ     Capital G Dot
ġ     ġ     Lower G Dot

Caoimhín

Yesterday I could'nt read any post, they were all empty. It works now, I don't know why because I've done nothing in particular. Computer's mysteries.

Test with phonetics:

ənˠɪʃ bʷɔ wɛ̃jç lam a ɪsˠ ə β´ɛ ɔgˠɔm ə nˠeb´ɼɔn̪ˠ ʃa cart̪ˠ gˠə λɔːɾ mʷɔɾ ʃɔ

Can you read this? :)

(Message edited by lughaidh on December 11, 2005)

A Chairde,

I'd like to thank Aonghus and Caoimhín for their suggestions. I upgraded my "keyboard manager" (or whatever it's called) and, as far as I can make out so far, it did no harm to my computer although it didn't provide a solution.

However, being (as I am) computer illiterate, I think it would depend on the recipient of my communication having the necessary font(s) installed on their system in order to see the dotted consonants. (I recently produced a document in Microsoft Word using one of the Chess fonts but it was unreadable by the recipient because they didn't have the font).

I mostly use "plain text" format in my emails when writing in Irish anyway so any advantage of being able to type dotted consonants would be apparent if the font is installed on the reader's computer.

Am I correct in thinking this, my friends?

look for "what about on a pc" here
http://www.hf.uib.no/smi/ksv/diacs.html
it will tell you how to set up a shortcut for the characters

this also discusses unicode support in windows 95 and 98
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;210341

forgive me if those were not helpful. Their instructions were greek to me. On a mac I did't have to do anything at all to enable unicode it just did its own thing and worked.

Larry, yes, your explanation is correct.

Two questions for you:

1. what operating system are you using?
2. Have you installed the Gentium font?

Caoimhín

Lughaidh ,

Your board font preferences setting may have been the reason you did not see the dotted consonants yesterday. I neglected to set Gentium as the default font on the large font style sheet. I've since added it.

As for your above posting, this is what I see on my side:


http://www.daltai.com/discus/files/consonants.gif

Thank you, Antaine, for those suggestions.

A Chaoimhín,

I'm using Windows 98 SE and yes, I have the font installed. I've just created a table using Excel to enable me to use the \char tag which should enable me to use the various codes if I want to type dotted consonants here:

code		produces dotted :
7683	ḃ	b
7682	Ḃ	B
267	ċ	c
266	Ċ	C
7691	ḋ	d
7690	Ḋ	D
7711	ḟ	f
7710	Ḟ	F
289	ġ	g
288	Ġ	G
7745	ṁ	m
7744	Ṁ	M
7767	ṗ	p
7766	Ṗ	P
7777	ṡ	s
7776	Ṡ	S
7787	ṫ	t
7786	Ṫ	T

I hope that the results are correct.

Scríobh Larry:

>>I hope that the results are correct.

The good news: I see dotted consonants in your post.

The bad news (for me at least): they aren't in Gentium, even though I have that font installed. But that was also true of Caoimhín's and Antaine's posts as well.

I should add the caveat, though, that my acquisition of the Gentium font wasn't without difficulties. I use Mac OS9, and although there was an OS9 version of Gentium on the SIL site, there was a glitch in the compressed file that yielded up errors when I unzipped it. After several attempts & downloads, I gave up on that version & downloaded the Windoze version. Using the free "Truetype Converter" utility, I converted the 'doze Truetype to Mac. And it works . . . sort of. It seems the extended character set available to OSX and Windoze users isn't standard on Mac OS9 & earlier, so I can't seem to access the dotted consonants in Gentian . . . and when folks here use it, I do see dotted characters, but from one of my Irish fonts, not Gentium. I'll have to do some tinkering & see what's up with all of this.

Any other OS9 users here having similar problems? And if so, have you found a solution?

(and let me here steal the thunder of any wiseacres who might reply "upgrade to OSX or switch to Windoze" -- these aren't options I care to avail of at this time. Is Luddite mé, agus is maith liom OS9.)

When I investigated Aonghus' earlier suggestion re the character map for shortcuts, I found that the dotted consonants weren't listed in the Gentium font but that they are listed in the Bunchló...

Go raibh maith agat, Larry.

I'll add those codes to the help section.

Caoimhín

Go raibh maith agatsa, a Chaoimhín