unicode keyboard and caron

ahuntleym · Post by **ahuntleym** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 10:54 pm

I use the US Extended Unicode Keyboard layout (International system preference) so I can easily enter diacritics in my texts. Mellel allows me to enter most diacritics without a problem, but for some reason, I can only use the caron with the letter ě (option + v + e). If I try to use a caraon with any other vowel, Mellel inserts a tab and nothing else. Is this a bug or is there something I need to do to include carons in my text?

Andrew

rpcameron · Post by **rpcameron** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 3:41 am

Does the font you have selected have the actual characters that you're trying to enter? That would be the first thing to check. If you could give a few more details, perhaps we might offer some more insight. …

ahuntleym · Post by **ahuntleym** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 3:27 pm

I'm not sure how to determine whether the font has the characters I'm trying to enter? Is there something I should use in the Font Book to determine this?

Despite my inability to determine whether the particular font has the character, I can supply you with more information. After receiving rpcameron's reply, I played around with various fonts in Mellel, and I discovered that this problem only occurs with the Adobe Open Type fonts installed on my computer. This includes all sorts of fonts, such as Minion Pro, Jenson Pro, Cronos Pro, Calson, Myriad Pro, New Gothic, Century Old Style, Courier, etc. Although I don't have this problem with any of the True Type fonts are included with Mac OS X, I prefer to use the Open Type fonts as Mellel recommends that.

With more guidance I'll try to determine if the specific fonts include the caron, but it seems strange to me that I can use these Adobe fonts to enter every type of diacritic mark except the caron, and even then, Adobe does include the e with a caron.

Andrew

rpcameron · Post by **rpcameron** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 4:49 pm

I just used the US Extended keyboard layout to enter every alphabetic character (lower and upper case) with a caron above it. I then reviewed the output with several different fonts, including most all of the Adobe Pro OpenType fonts in my library, and was very surprised with the results. Going across the keyboard, left-to-right, top-to-bottom, this is what I came up with (the font I used is Charis SIL, which is a very complete font):

And here are my results (I've used screen captures from Font Book so you can see exactly which characters are missing—and I was quite surprised with them, especially from Adobe):

Arial:
Adobe Caslon Pro:
Charis SIL:
Adobe Garamond Premier Pro:
Helvetica:
Adobe Jenson Pro:
Adobe Minion Pro:
Adobe Myriad Pro:
Palatino:
Times:
Times New Roman:
Adobe Warnock Pro:

ahuntleym · Post by **ahuntleym** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 6:44 pm

I guess this is an Adobe problem and not a Mellel problem. Thanks for all the information, and I'll try to find out more from Abode.

Thanks again,

Andrew

rpcameron · Post by **rpcameron** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 10:32 pm

ahuntleym wrote:I guess this is an Adobe problem and not a Mellel problem. Thanks for all the information, and I'll try to find out more from Abode.

Actually, it's neither's problem. The reason it occurs in the Adobe fonts is not because of an encoding problem, but because the font simply does not contain those characters. The US Extended keyboard uses precomposed characters for its accented letters. You can replicate them using the Adobe fonts by using the combining caron character (U+030C) after the desired letter. The kerning/character spacing won't be perfect, but it will get the job done. (Until Mellel implements custom/specific character spacing or kerning pairs, this will just be a kludge and not a workaround; most other word processors, including Pages, do allow for character spacing adjustment.)

(Upon my first inspection I was quite surprised as well, since I know that Adobe Pro fonts were supposed to be able to allow for working in any Latin, Greek or Cyrillic environment, especially Garamond Premier Pro. The only two fonts that had all of the precomposed characters included were Charis SIL and Gentium, both provided by SIL. Since I previously forgot to include Gentium, here is a sample from that face:

Charis SIL includes Regular, Bold, Italic and Bold Italic faces, and Gentium includes only Regular and Italic faces; both however, are beautiful faces and suitable for many types of work.)

ahuntleym · Post by **ahuntleym** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 11:21 pm

That combining caron trick works great. As you indicated, the kerning is off, but I just need to use the caron for teaching materials at this point, so I'm not too concerned about a totally polished look. When I have some spare money, I'll look into the Charis and Gentium fonts.

Thanks for the speedy help.

Andrew

ahuntleym · Post by **ahuntleym** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 11:28 pm

In my previous message, I didn't realize the fonts you suggested--Charis SIL and Gentium--were free. Even better.

Andrew