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Welcome to Computers and Writing Systems

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Scripts Around the World

The Non-Roman Script Initiative

The NRSI is a department of SIL International whose task is to provide guidance, information, research and development for SIL International and its partners to facilitate the use of non-Roman and complex scripts in linguistic study, translation, literacy and publishing.

Our vision is that language communities and the people who work for them be able to work effectively and productively regardless of the writing system used in a given community, i.e., that script-related computing issues do not impede them in their work.

Recent additions and updates

SIL TypeTuner Web Bob Hallissy, 2009-10-22; 322 reads

TypeTuner Web (or TTW) is a web delivery system for customized versions of SIL fonts.

SILConverters 3.1 Bob Eaton, Mark Penny, 2009-10-06; 55992 reads

This package provides tools through which you can change the encoding, font, and/or script of text in Microsoft Word and other Office documents, XML documents, and SFM text and lexicon documents. It also installs a system-wide repository to manage your encoding converters and transliterators (TECkit, CC, ICU, Perl, or Python-based, as well as support for adding custom transduction engines).

Tai Heritage Pro Jim Brase, 2009-09-22; 4218 reads

The Tai Heritage typeface is designed to reflect the traditional hand-written style of the Tai Viet script. Under the name Tai Heritage Pro, it is now available as a Unicode-encoded font (based on the upcoming Unicode 5.2 Standard) with Graphite rendering.

Galatia SIL NRSI team, 2009-07-13; 138698 reads

For displaying and printing Biblical Greek texts in the Unicode encoding. This font is now released under SIL's Open Font License.

Nuosu SIL NRSI staff, 2009-07-09; 37103 reads

The Nuosu SIL Font is a single Unicode font for the standardized Yi script used by a large ethnic group in southwestern China. The font includes a complete set of Yi syllables and radicals (as defined in The Unicode Standard), a basic set of Roman glyphs and various punctuation.

Apparatus SIL NRSI team, 2009-06-12; 14151 reads

The Apparatus SIL fonts are the Unicode version of their predecessor, SIL Apparatus. The design is the same, only the encoding is different. The Apparatus SIL fonts were designed to provide most of the symbols needed to reproduce the textual apparatus found in major editions of Greek & Hebrew biblical texts. This font is now released under SIL's Open Font License.

Fonts in Cyberspace 2009-11-05; 105587 reads

A guide to finding language fonts on the Internet.

Padauk Font Martin Hosken, 2009-06-09; 45947 reads

Padauk is a smart font capable of rendering Burmese and the Myanmar script.

Graphite in OpenOffice.org Tim Eves, 2009-05-07; 29865 reads

This project integrates the Graphite smart font rendering engine for complex non-roman scripts and writing systems into OpenOffice.org, the well-known cross-platform FLOSS office suite.

Doulos SIL Font Home NRSI staff, 2009-04-24; 575047 reads

2009-04-24: New Version 4.106 available!!! This version supports Unicode 5.1 and adds support for Small capitals.

Doulos SIL is a Unicode-encoded serif font similar to Times New Roman. Besides having a comprehensive inventory of glyphs needed for almost any Roman- or Cyrillic-based writing system, it also contains the entire inventory of the International Phonetic Alphabet. It has built-in “smart-font” capabilities, so diacritics are properly placed.

Doulos is very similar to Times/Times New Roman, but only has a single face - regular. It is intended for use alongside other Times-like fonts where a range of styles (italic, bold) are not needed.

Charis SIL Font Home NRSI staff, 2009-04-24; 288115 reads

2009-04-24: Version 4.106 now available!!! This version supports Unicode 5.1 and adds support for Small capitals.

Charis SIL is a Unicode-encoded serif font. Besides having a comprehensive inventory of glyphs needed for almost any Roman- or Cyrillic-based writing system, it also contains the entire inventory of the International Phonetic Alphabet. It has built-in “smart-font” capabilities, so diacritics are properly placed.

Charis is similar to Bitstream Charter, one of the first fonts designed specifically for laser printers. It is highly readable and holds up well in less-than-ideal reproduction environments. It also has a full set of styles - regular, italic, bold, bold italic - and so is more useful in general publishing than Doulos SIL. Charis is a serif, proportionally-spaced font optimized for readability in long printed documents.

FontUtils Martin Hosken, Bob Hallissy, 2009-04-17; 11855 reads

This package includes Windows executable versions of the scripts supplied as part of the Perl Font::TTF::Scripts package.

Resources that include support for Unicode 5.1

Fonts:

Charis SIL and Doulos SIL
- The 17 of our PUA characters that were added to Unicode 5.1 are accessible by both the PUA and Unicode codepoints. See footnote1
Andika Basic and Gentium Basic
- Four (4) of our PUA characters that were added to Unicode 5.1 are accessible by both the PUA and Unicode codepoints. See footnote2
Unicode BMP Fallback Font

Keyboards:

Windows IPA Keyman and MSKLC keyboard
- upstep, downstep, hook v (bilabial flap) and hook w all use their Unicode 5.1 codepoints now.

Unicode 5.1 Latin and Cyrillic characters – sorted

Unicode Character Properties Excel Workbook

TECkit including Encore2Unicode

SIL Corporate PUA Assignments

Mapping files:

IPA93 to Unicode 5.1 and IPA1990 to Unicode 5.1
- Unicode 5.1 now supports all characters that were in IPA93 and IPA-1990
SIL PUA to Unicode 5.1 Mapping

Andika Font Annie Olsen, 2008-05-05; 73209 reads

Andika is a sans serif, Unicode-compliant font designed especially for literacy use, taking into account the needs of beginning readers. The focus is on clear, easy-to-perceive letterforms that will not be readily confused with one another.

Gentium Basic Fonts Victor Gaultney, 2008-04-04; 166872 reads

Gentium Basic and Gentium Book Basic are font families based on the original Gentium design, but with additional weights. The "Book" family is slightly heavier. Both families come with a complete regular, bold, italic and bold italic set of fonts. These "Basic" fonts, do not, however, support Cyrillic, Greek or full IPA.

Articles of general interest

The NRSI Model for Implementing Writing Systems Melinda Lyons, Victor Gaultney, 2001-07-04; 12085 reads

Over its short history, the Non-Roman Script Initiative of SIL International has developed a model for using computers to implement the various writing systems that are needed for text input, storage, processing, and output.

The Digital Divide Alan Conner, 2001-01-01; 9383 reads

SIL chartered the Non-Roman Script Initiative (NRSI) to enable ethnic minorities to bridge the digital divide. NRSI participates in the work of the Unicode Consortium, an international nonprofit founded to establish a universal standard for representing each character of all the world's writing systems on the computer.

An introduction to keyboard design theory: What goes where? Martin Hosken, 2003-02-17; 49150 reads

Designing a keyboard is relatively easy: you just allocate codepoints to keystrokes. The difficulty comes when trying to decide what codepoints to assign to what keystrokes. Do you design based around the characters on the keytops of a user's keyboard or the relative position of the keys? What do you do if you want to be able to type more characters than there are keys in your keyboard?

Glossary Melinda Lyons, et al., 2001-09-01; 18979 reads

A glossary of terms associated with implementing writing systems compiled by the NRSI.

U+F19C U+A71B MODIFIER LETTER RAISED UP ARROW
U+F19D U+A71C MODIFIER LETTER RAISED DOWN ARROW
U+F19E U+A71D MODIFIER LETTER AFRICANIST DOWNSTEP
U+F19F U+A71E MODIFIER LETTER AFRICANIST UPSTEP
U+F208 U+2C6D LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SMALL ALPHA
U+F21A U+2C73 LATIN SMALL LETTER W WITH HOOK
U+F21B U+2C72 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER W WITH HOOK
U+F245 U+A72B LATIN SMALL LETTER TRESILLO
U+F246 U+A72D LATIN SMALL LETTER CUATRILLO
U+F25A U+A727 LATIN SMALL LETTER HENG
U+F25B U+2C6E LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M WITH HOOK
U+F25F U+2C71 LATIN SMALL LETTER V WITH RIGHT HOOK
U+F1E7 U+A788 MODIFIER LETTER LOW CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT
U+F1E9 U+A789 MODIFIER LETTER COLON
U+F1EA U+A78A MODIFIER LETTER SHORT EQUALS SIGN
U+F26A U+A78B LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SALTILLO
U+F21D U+A78C LATIN SMALL LETTER SALTILLO

U+F1E9 U+A789 MODIFIER LETTER COLON
U+F1EA U+A78A MODIFIER LETTER SHORT EQUALS SIGN
U+F26A U+A78B LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SALTILLO
U+F21D U+A78C LATIN SMALL LETTER SALTILLO

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