[comp.fonts] Greek WYSIWYG Wordprocessor

dean@vaxa.uwa.oz (01/07/90)

Help wanted for Wordprocessor with WYSIWYG
Greek Fonts.


I need to do some word processing, in Greek, using
IBM compatibles and an HP Laserjet.  Does anyone know
of a wordprocessing package which is WYSIWYG (What You
See Is What You Get) when using Greek fonts?  The best
I've seen so far is Word 5.0 with preview, however, this
is incredibly tedious to use.

Any help will be gratefully accepted and I shall summarise 
answers sent to me.


Dean Economou
Department of Electrical 
and Electronic Engineering
University of Western Australia.

woody@rpp386.cactus.org (Woodrow Baker) (01/08/90)

In article <1490.25a76b2e@vaxa.uwa.oz>, dean@vaxa.uwa.oz writes:
> Help wanted for Wordprocessor with WYSIWYG
> Greek Fonts.
> 
> 
> I need to do some word processing, in Greek, using
> IBM compatibles and an HP Laserjet.  Does anyone know
> of a wordprocessing package which is WYSIWYG (What You
> See Is What You Get) when using Greek fonts?  The best
> I've seen so far is Word 5.0 with preview, however, this
> is incredibly tedious to use.
> 
> Any help will be gratefully accepted and I shall summarise 
> answers sent to me.
> 
> 
> Dean Economou
> Department of Electrical 
> and Electronic Engineering
> University of Western Australia.

There is a company that publishes just what you want.  The name of the
software is Multi-lingual scribe.  It handles, greek, hebrew, cyrilic,
and a host of middle east languages.  The company name escapes me at the
moment, but I think it is Gamma production or something similar.  Perhaps
someone else can enlighten you.  The company is somewhere out on the east
coast of the US.  Somewhere, I have a demo.  The company will supply you with a demo version that does not print all characters,
but it is suffecient for examining the program

Cheers
Woody
 

amf@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Andrew Fountain) (01/11/90)

>Help wanted for Wordprocessor with WYSIWYG
>Greek Fonts.


>I need to do some word processing, in Greek, using
>IBM compatibles and an HP Laserjet.  Does anyone know
>of a wordprocessing package which is WYSIWYG (What You
>See Is What You Get) when using Greek fonts?  The best
>I've seen so far is Word 5.0 with preview, however, this
>is incredibly tedious to use.

My experience with Greek word-processors is that those that are good at
handling the fonts are usually very poor at actually processing words.

I have developed a set of Greek fonts for Microsoft Windows. They work
well in Windows Write, and I imagine will work with Word for Windows.
The set includes full diacritics as well as any odd characters I can find that
may be needed.

Also included are:
- A keyboard driver which allows easy entry of breathing/accent/vowel
  combinations.
- A filter to convert Greek files from the TLG/PHI-CCAT format into
  Windows format, preserving all information.

 At present there are printer fonts for most dot-matrix
printers including Epson LQ at 180*360 dpi. I have a Greek font for the
Laserjet but it does not include diacritics, and one or two characters
are in the wrong place. One of my students is working on correcting this.

I am willing to send you a copy of the package if you are interested, as
I would appreciate any feedback at this stage.

--
amf@ecs.soton.ac.uk                  Andrew Fountain
Tel: +44 703 592831                  Dept of Electronics and Computer Science
Fax: +44 703 593045                  University of Southampton
Telex: 47661 SOTONU G                Southampton  SO9 5NH  England

ddoughty@drunivac.drew.edu (01/13/90)

In article <1490.25a76b2e@vaxa.uwa.oz>, dean@vaxa.uwa.oz writes:
> Help wanted for Wordprocessor with WYSIWYG
> Greek Fonts.
>  
> I need to do some word processing, in Greek, using
> IBM compatibles and an HP Laserjet.  Does anyone know
> of a wordprocessing package which is WYSIWYG (What You
> See Is What You Get) when using Greek fonts?  The best
> I've seen so far is Word 5.0 with preview, however, this
> is incredibly tedious to use.

I use WP 5.0 all the time for Greek, and it's excellent.  I assume you 
have a Hercules graphics-plus card.  You can use the Hercules Fontman 
program to modify the WP 5.0 HRF files to display Greek on the screen. 
I have created WP keyboard macros that allow me to enter all accents 
instantaneously.  

Of course, you will have to modify the PRS file in appropriate ways.
I have it set up so that whever I choose "outline" I get Greek 
characters, and my printer will print Greek.  But equally well 
substitute Greek characters for something else (shadow, or very large, 
for example).

WordPerfect 5.1, however, should solve all these problems, since it is 
supposed to display and print all possible characters.  But I assume 
you will still need a graphics card.

Darrell Doughty
Professor of New Testament
Drew University   DDOUGHTY@DREW

woody@rpp386.cactus.org (Woodrow Baker) (01/14/90)

In article <21804.9001111127@hilliard.ecs.soton.ac.uk>, amf@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Andrew Fountain) writes:
> >Help wanted for Wordprocessor with WYSIWYG
> >Greek Fonts.
> 
> 
> >I need to do some word processing, in Greek, using
> >IBM compatibles and an HP Laserjet.  Does anyone know
> >of a wordprocessing package which is WYSIWYG (What You
> >See Is What You Get) when using Greek fonts?  The best
> >I've seen so far is Word 5.0 with preview, however, this
> >is incredibly tedious to use.
> 
> My experience with Greek word-processors is that those that are good at
> handling the fonts are usually very poor at actually processing words.
> 
> I have developed a set of Greek fonts for Microsoft Windows. They work
> well in Windows Write, and I imagine will work with Word for Windows.
> The set includes full diacritics as well as any odd characters I can find that
> may be needed.
> 
> Also included are:
> - A keyboard driver which allows easy entry of breathing/accent/vowel
>   combinations.
> - A filter to convert Greek files from the TLG/PHI-CCAT format into
>   Windows format, preserving all information.
> 
>  At present there are printer fonts for most dot-matrix
> printers including Epson LQ at 180*360 dpi. I have a Greek font for the
> Laserjet but it does not include diacritics, and one or two characters
> are in the wrong place. One of my students is working on correcting this.
> I am willing to send you a copy of the package if you are interested, as
I certainly would be interested.  Especially in the routines to create
windows fonts.  I am assuming that you are refering to building screen
fonts.  I am looking for source to do this.  What I'd like to find is a
routine that would take a true HPLJ font, and create screen fonts for 
windows using the HP font.

Now:
	There is a product called multilingul scribe.
It is sold by a company called gamma technologies I think.  I have a demo
of it some where, and will make an effort to find it.  It works fine.
It does greek, hebrew, cyriliic, and several arabic type fonts.  It
has strong screen and printer support, including HP laser jet.  They have
a demo of it for MS-DOS, that cripples the fonts so that certain chars
are printed as blocks, and allows only 2 lines to be saved, but it certainly
looks fine.

Cheers
Woody
i
> 
> --
> amf@ecs.soton.ac.uk                  Andrew Fountain
> Tel: +44 703 592831                  Dept of Electronics and Computer Science
> Fax: +44 703 593045                  University of Southampton
> Telex: 47661 SOTONU G                Southampton  SO9 5NH  England

koontz@cam.nist.gov (John E. Koontz X5180) (01/15/90)

The Nota Bene word processor deals with several non-Roman scripts in the 
context of a very good scholarly word processor based on XyWrite 3.  The
standard word processor includes spell checker, thesaurus, text indexing,
text databasing, etc.  A foreign language facility and bibliographic package
are available as add-ons.  For further information by email contact the
Nota Bene listserv at notabene@taunivm.bitnet, or the sponsor of that listserv,
Itamar Even-Zohar at b10@taunivm.bitnet.  

This is a personal recommendation that does not reflect the opinions of my
employers.

koontz@cam.nist.gov (John E. Koontz X5180) (01/15/90)

Dragonfly Software
285 West Broadway, #600
New York, NY, USA  10013
212-334-0445

Nota Bene gets a favorable nod from the editors of PC Magazine in a review
of versions 5 of Display Write, MS Word, and Word Perfect in issue 8.20,
dated November 28, 1989.  At least one subscriber to the Nota Bene list
has also tried Multilingual Scholar and feels Nota Bene is superior as a 
word processor.  I have only tried Nota Bene, and have used only the standard
ASCII version, which I have customized for use with the Siouan languages of
North America.  Customization was easy.  The special version of Nota Bene
that handles European/Philological languages is supposed to be good for the
languages that it does handle, which I believe include Greek.  LaserJet
printers are supported, per the original request.  

djb@wjh12.harvard.edu (David J. Birnbaum) (01/15/90)

Nota Bene (by Dragonfly) is an excellent tool for Greek word
processing.  It is not, however, WYSIWYG, in the usual sense of
the term.  Specifically, it operates in text mode, rather than
graphics mode, although screen fonts are available for Greek and
many other character sets.  One feature of text mode is that the
screen display is monospaced.  Nota Bene knows that letters may have
variable width and it puts the correct number of characters on a
line, but that line may run off the right edge of your screen.
A ragged right margin on the screen may correspond to an even margin
on the printer.  Text mode is much faster than graphics mode WYSIWYG
and some users may feel that true WYSIWYG is not really necessary
for Greek text, as long as the system provides legible Greek characters,
which Nota Bene certainly does.

--David

============================================================
David J. Birnbaum         djb@wjh12.harvard.edu [Internet]
                          djb@harvunxw.bitnet   [Bitnet]
============================================================