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SILConverters 4.0

Microsoft Word/COM support for TECkit, CC, and ICU, Perl and Python

Bob Eaton, Mark Penny, 2015-08-14

Overview

This package provides tools through which you can change the encoding, font, and/or script of text in Microsoft Word and other Office documents, OpenOffice and LibreOffice 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).

For developers, it provides a simple COM interface to select and use a converter from the repository. It is easy to use from VBA, C++, C#, Perl, Python or any .NET/COM enabled language.

The core EncConverters assembly is fully integrated with SIL FieldWorks, Speech Analyzer, Phonology Assistant, Adapt It and OneStory Editor software. It provides the same system-wide registry of installed and available encoding converters for all of these user programs. Additionally the package includes some extra utilities such as a clipboard converter for manipulating text between cut and paste operations.

The following picture illustrates the suite of tools, utilities, and applications that are available and how they interact:

Figure 1 shows the three distinct layers to SIL Converters.

• At the top are various client applications. These user-oriented programs use the EncConverters core assembly to provide encoding conversion and other transduction facilities to their users.
• The EncConverters core provides an abstraction layer so the client applications can access the various transduction engines without having to implement the interface to each one separately.
• The transduction engines are the server applications that provide the actual conversion/text processing capability.

If you are an end user, you are probably most interested in how to use EncConverters with client applications—for example:

• Using the Bulk Word Document Converter to convert the encoding of text in one or more Word document to Unicode, or
• Using Bulk SFM Converter to convert SFM documents into Unicode (typically texts and lexicons from Shoebox to Toolbox)

If you are a developer, you may be interested in

• Using EncConverters to gain access to the different transduction resources available by writing to the single EncConverters’ interface. See this webpage for details and code snippets.

Upgrade! New Features

This version (4.0) was released to fix various bugs including most significantly the removal of the core EncConverters assembly from the Global Assembly Cache. From v4.0 and following, client applications will redistribute the core assemblies ECInterfaces.dll and SilEncConverters.dll with their applications directly. They can still share the same global system repository of activated converters, but there will be less dependency between the various clients in terms of release requirements.

As of v3.1.1, a new transduction engine was added that provides support for the webpage-based converters in the Scientific and Technical Hindi  Google Group. The  Files section of that group contains a number of webpage-based encoding converters and transliterators for numerous Indic legacy encodings. The conversion code embedded in these web-pages can now be used to convert data with any SIL Converters client application (e.g. the Bulk Word Document Converter) by using the new Technical Hindi Html EncConverter Add-in. To activate this new add-in be sure to check the Maps and Tables, Indic converters feature during installation. Once installed, you can read Help for Technical Hindi (Google group) Html Converter Plug-in (in Start, All Programs, SIL Converters, Help) for further instructions.

The Bulk Word Document Converter was also updated to fix a few problems related to converting text that was inserted into a document a single character at a time (thru the Insert Symbol command).

SILConverters 4.0 corresponds to the same version of the core EncConverters assembly as Fieldworks 7.1 and overcomes the uninstallation problem previously encountered in Speech Analyzer 3.0.1 and Phonology Assistant 3.0. If you uninstalled any of the applications which used the earlier version of the EncConverters core, it would become unavailable to the other applications that used the same, earlier version of the EncConverters core until an installation Repair was done. See this webpage for details. This new version solves that uninstallation problem.

The Bulk Word Document Converter was enhanced for this new version by adding a search feature which will search your hard-drive for documents containing specific fonts to be converted.

The TECkit Map Unicode Editor has also been enhanced to show character maps for both the left and right-hand side of a conversion so that a point-and-click approach to encoding conversion can be used in developing the map.

Quick Installation Overview

The Master Setup program runs a series of installers:

1. Software prerequisites—Necessary system updates and add-ons are installed on your computer.
2. SIL Encoding Converters 4.0 Setup—Conversion applications are installed and conversion Maps and Tables are copied to your hard drive.
3. SIL Converters for Office 2003—Currently this installer only installs an additional operating system update.
4. Converter Option Installer—A utility that allows you to activate the conversion Maps and Tables you want to use.

Full installation instructions can be found here: SIL Converters 4.0 Installation. This document is intended to guide you through the Master Installer installation screens and initial SIL Converters 4.0 Setup. This guide may be sufficient for many users. However, to make full use of SIL Converters, you should download and refer to the Help for SIL Converters documentation (download below).

Downloads

SIL Converters 4.0

This version of SILConverters uses the same version of the EncConverters core as FieldWorks 6.0.

Previous versions

The older products are still available for those who require it:

• SILConverters 3.1.1
  • SIL Converters 3.1 Installation

• SILConverters 3.0
  • SIL Converters 3.0 Installation
• SILConverters 2.6 (and 2.6.1)
  • SIL Converters 2.6 (and 2.6.1) Installation
• SILConverters 2.5
  • SIL Converters 2.5 Installation
  • SIL Converters 2.5 documentation
• SILConverters 2.2
• SILConverters 2.1 and the older
• Encoding Converters

Please note, however, that we strongly recommend using the newer version from this page.

SIL Converters Maps and Tables

This section describes the encodings, font names, and converters contained in the different Maps and Tables packages available in the SILConverters 3.1 installer. You can check below for the fonts/encodings that you are interested in to see which Maps and Tables package to install.

Most end-users are interested only in a small number of encodings. Typically, computer support people have created TECkit maps and/or CC tables for the various encodings used in each entity, alleviating most end-users from having to create their own maps and tables.

Because there are hundreds of possible encoding converters and transliterators that different end-users may be interested in, they are packaged into logically-related groups of converters and are available via a two-step process.

Steps

1) Use the SILConverters installer to install the package(s) of converter likely to be useful to you (e.g. based on your entity).

2) Use the Converter Options Installer application to install the few applications you want into the EncConverters’ system repository.

The following sections give the details about fonts and encodings for different Maps and Tablespackages:

Basic Converters

Converters and Transliterators common to all SIL. This includes the following:

ICU Transliterators

Configuration information for the following ICU transliterators are for Unicode-encodings only.

These are not the only transliterators available via the ICU Transliterator transduction engine, but are only a few of the pre-defined latinizing (or romanizing) transliterators that can be useful in different client applications for different ranges of Unicode.

• Devanagari to Latin (aka. Devanagari-Latin)
• Bengali to Latin (aka. Bengali-Latin)
• Gujarati to Latin (aka. Gujarati-Latin)
• Gurmukhi to Latin (aka. Gurmukhi-Latin)
• Kannada to Latin (aka. Kannada-Latin)
• Malayalam to Latin (aka. Malayalam-Latin)
• Oriya to Latin (aka. Oriya-Latin)
• Tamil to Latin (aka. Tamil-Latin)
• Telugu to Latin (aka. Telugu-Latin)
• Arabic to Latin (aka. Arabic-Latin)
• Cyrillic to Latin (aka. Cyrillic-Latin)
• Greek to Latin (aka. Greek-Latin)
• Han to Latin (aka. Han-Latin)
• Hangul to Latin (aka. Hangul-Latin)
• Hebrew to Latin (aka. Hebrew-Latin)
• Hiragana to Latin (aka. Hiragana-Latin)
• Katakana to Latin (aka. Katakana-Latin)
• Jamo to Latin (aka. Jamo-Latin)
• NumericPinyin to Latin (aka. NumericPinyin-Latin)
• Any to Latin (aka. Any-Latin)

FindPhone to IPA converters

Adds the following converters for dealing with FindPhone encoded data:

• FindPhone>SIL IPA93
• FindPhone>UNICODE

SAG Indic

Contains encoding converter map(s) for the following encoding/font:

Cameroon

Contains encoding converter map(s) for the following encoding/fonts:

Central Africa

Contains encoding converter map(s) for the following encoding:

East Africa

Contains encoding converter map(s) for the following encoding/fonts:

Eastern Congo Group

Contains encoding converter map(s) for the following encoding/fonts:

West Africa

Contains encoding converter map(s) for the following encoding/fonts:

Hebrew

Contains encoding converter map(s) for the following encoding/fonts:

Indic Converters

• ISCII Encodings

The following ISCII encodings are supported:

• Himalli

The following Himalli encodings are supported:

• Miscellaneous TECkit Converters

This package contains TECkit maps for the following Indic encodings:

Papua New Guinea

Contains encoding converter map(s) for the following encoding/fonts:

NLCI (India)

Contains encoding converter map(s) for the following encoding/font:

Related resources

Encoding Conversion Frequently Asked Questions and Known Issues Lorna A. Priest, 2009-05-15
Frequently Asked Questions and Known Issues concerning conversion of legacy data to Unicode.

SIL IPA93 Data Conversion Lorna A. Priest, 2009-02-16
Step-by-step instructions on how to convert Microsoft Word, text or Standard Format (sfm) documents that use SIL IPA93 fonts in order to use Unicode fonts.

To compose or decompose, that is the question Bob Hallissy, 2005-02-15
In our workflow, should we standardize on composed (e.g., NFC) or decomposed (e.g., NFD) character encoding for our Unicode data?

 OpenOffice Linguistic Tools — this tool provides similar resources for LibreOffice

Contact information

Contact for limited support.

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