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The LinguaFont package is intended to assist linguists in the area of font management. It provides flexible software for designing or altering fonts and also a large number of ready-to-use fonts covering a wide variety of languages, the history of English and the International Phonetic Alphabet. The interested linguist can start work with the package straight away if the supplied fonts are to his/her liking or can modify them easily.
The programme suite works with personal computers (IBM or compatibles), allowing users to (i) design their own screen fonts, (ii) determine the keyboard layout they want when using a particular font and (iii) create printer fonts to match the screen, either for laser printers (in the Hewlett Packard Laserjet standard) or for 24 needle dot matrix printers (in the Epson/NEC standard). The set of utilities naturally falls into the following three groups.
The main programme here is VideoEd with which one can design fonts for either the VGA or Hercules Plus card; the programme is menu-driven to facilitate handling. You can convert fonts from one type of video adapter to another and can load a VGA font into video memory (this can also be done with an external utility, independently of VideoEd). When processing a font you can swivel, invert, expand, compress, delete, copy, move characters within a font or from font to font. You can draw continuously or dot for dot, and view the entire font graphically; changes can be undone and a character mask can be placed over the current character to promote unity of design. The fonts you design for the screen can subsequently be loaded into your video adapter without VideoEd.
Shipped with LinguaFont is a generic keyboard driver which can be copied by users and then tailored to their needs. The idea is that, having redefined the shape of some screen symbols (to render some foreign language characters, for example), you can now set some alphanumeric keys of the keyboard to these altered values. The programme is simplicity itself: you are presented with a keyboard template on the screen and fill it in as you desire. The keyboard is then altered by the programme SetKey. This is loaded on the DOS level and is at your disposal in any application programme which does not overlay the operating system with its own keyboard.
The largest part of LinguaFont involves designing fonts for printers. Here the programmes are subgrouped according to whether they apply to laser printers or dot matrix printers. The element "las(er)" is contained in the name of programmes for laser printers, e.g. LaserEd and the element "dot" in those for dot matrix printers, e.g. DotEd. These are the equivalents of VideoEd in as much as the actual character definitions are carried out with the comfort and ease of the video editor. Individual characters can be manipulated in a variety of ways and moved around at will. With LaserEd the font and character headers (in the Hewlett Packard standard) can be edited by the user. Laser printer fonts can be specified for a certain style, weight and orientation. Again all editors are menu-driven with online help.
A number of printer utilities are included in this group which allow you to test your printer, load a download font, alter the point size of characters, and most importantly, combine two existing fonts (laser or dot matrix printer fonts) to a new one; in addition you can convert screen to printer fonts, dot matrix to laser fonts, etc.
LinguaFont comes with more than 2MB of programmes and fonts (2 high-density diskettes) along with a comprehensive reference manual (approx. 370 pages) in which not only the commands for the programmes are discussed with examples but general information and an exhaustive glossary are also contained. Details of how the various parts of LinguaFont interrelate and how you use the package with your software (word processor, database manager, etc.) are discussed. All programmes can be run from a single desktop in the form of a standardized interface to the group with pull-down menus and mouse support.
Included in the LinguaFont package are sixteen language and four other special fonts arranged in various files as follows.
In addition are there 19 further fonts which can be adapted by users by altering the forms of individual letters to generate special symbols within a standard font.1) a ARABIC_1.LPF Arabic (Part 1 of Arabic font) b ARABIC_2.LPF Arabic (Part 2 of Arabic font) 2) BALKAN .LPF Balkan 3) BALTIC .LPF Baltic 4) CLASS_GR.LPF Classical Greek 5) CZECH .LPF Czech 6) EXT_CYR .LPF Extended Cyrillic 7) HEBREW .LPF Hebrew 8) HIST_ENG.LPF History of English 9) HUNGARIA.LPF Hungarian 10) MOD_GREK.LPF Modern Greek 11) POLISH .LPF Polish 12) ROMANCE .LPF Romance 13) a RUSS_COU.LPF Russian (Courier typeface font) b RUSS_16 .LPF Russian (Line Printer 16.6 cpi font) c RUSS_TMS.LPF Russian (Times Roman font) 14) SANSKRIT.LPF Sanskrit 15) SCANDIN .LPF Scandinavian 16) TURKISH .LPF Turkish 1) a PHONETIC.LPF Phonetic font in Letter Gothic typeface b PH_TMS_1.LPF Phonetic font in Times Roman typeface (i) c PH_TMS_2.LPF Phonetic font in Times Roman typeface (ii) 2) MEDIEVAL.LPF Half uncial typeface font 3) SMALLCAP.LPF Font consisting of small capitals
1) COUR_UPR.LPF Courier 10 cpi upright
2) COUR_BLD.LPF Courier 10 cpi bold
3) COUR_ITL.LPF Courier 10 cpi italic
1) LG_UPRT.LPF Letter Gothic 12 cpi upright
2) LG_BOLD.LPF Letter Gothic 12 cpi bold
3) LG_ITAL.LPF Letter Gothic 12 cpi italic
4) LG_TINY.LPF Letter Gothic 16.6 cpi condensed
1) HELV10_U.LPF Helvetica 10 cpi upright
2) HELV10_B.LPF Helvetica 10 cpi bold
3) HELV10_I.LPF Helvetica 10 cpi italic
4) HELV12_U.LPF Helvetica 12 cpi upright
5) HELV12_B.LPF Helvetica 12 cpi bold
6) HELV12_I.LPF Helvetica 12 cpi italic
1) TMS10_U .LPF Times Roman 10 cpi upright
2) TMS10_B .LPF Times Roman 10 cpi bold
3) TMS10_I .LPF Times Roman 10 cpi italic
4) TMS12_U .LPF Times Roman 12 cpi upright
5) TMS12_B .LPF Times Roman 12 cpi bold
6) TMS12_I .LPF Times Roman 12 cpi italic
To match the printer fonts corresponding screen fonts are supplied for most
languages.
Raymond Hickey, Universitat GH Essen, FB 3 Literatur- und Sprachwissenschaften, FB 3 Anglistik / Linguistik, D-45177 ESSEN, Germany.1) BALKAN .VGA Balkan 2) CLASS_GR.VGA Classical Greek 3) CZECH .VGA Czech 4) HELS_SYM.VGA Helsinki corpus symbol set 5) HIST_ENG.VGA History of English 6) HUNGARIA.VGA Hungarian 7) IBM .VGA IBM standard screen font 8) MOD_GR .VGA Modern Greek 9) PHONETIC.VGA Phonetic font 10) POLISH .VGA Polish 11) ROMANCE .VGA Romance 12) RUSSIAN .VGA Russian 13) SANSERIF.VGA Serif-less standard font 14) SLENDER .VGA Slender-stroke standard font 15) TURKISH .VGA Turkish
Tel. +49 201 183 3441 Fax. +49 201 183 3437
Raymond Hickey <LAN300@VM.HRZ.UNI-ESSEN.de>