Dear Robin,
Your post on Jaghbub brought back some memories. I have not worked with
Jaghbub but compiled some convertors about ten years ago. So I
installed Jaghbub on my pre-OS X Mac and did some tests with scripts
before responding. AFAIK, there is no direct Jaghbub>Unicode convertor.
However, I can think of at least three intermediate formats which can
be used, depending on your particular circumstances, before ending up
with Unicode. They are ASCII, HTML Entities, and UTF-8.
ASCII: If you have a small number of files to convert, and if
preserving styles and most formatting is a major concern, a common
solution would be to use a consistent notation composed of ASCII
characters only which can serve as an intermediate format between the
non-Unicode font (Jaghbub) and the Unicode font (Arial). This means
replacing in your Mac file every Romanised character (specific to
non-Roman script languages) with a notation, for example,
<capHdotunder>, <hdotunder> and so on. (As Word file format is
cross-platform), this same file can be opened on your PC. You can then
apply Arial and replace every notation with the corresponding Unicode
character.
You can, of course, not use notation and simply open your Mac files on
your PC and apply Arial. In this case Jaghbub will mutate, but the
consistency in its mutation will allow a user (who knows the subject
matter of the text) to replace every mutant with a corresponding
Unicode character. (This can't be recommended if the work is to be done
by a keyboard operator).
If the files to be converted are many and styles/formatting not a
concern, it is worth compiling on your Mac a 'paradoid' on which you
can Drag-and-Drop multiple files. This means investing some time in the
short run but once the 'paradoid' is compiled, you can straightaway
create simultaneously new files with the intermediate ASCII format with
notation (leaving your original unaltered). The notation in this files
will look something like <H>, <h> etc (as the Paradigma 2.0 app which
creates the convertor allows the compiler only one character to be
inserted between the tags, AFAIK). These files can be opened on your PC
and changed as above (but taking care to Find case-sensitive). You can
download Paradigma from: ftp://www.hf.uib.no/smi-files/
HTML Entities: I find this method hassle-free. I myself work on Mac OS
X (Panther) with Nisus Writer and Nisus Writer Express. If you have
Nisus Writer (which Opens and Saves Word files), I can send you off
list a Classic macro which will replace all non-common characters in
Jaghbub with HTML Entities, e.g. "ṣ" for s with dot below. Then,
if you work with OS X and have a Unicode savvy app like Nisus Writer
Express, you can use UnicodeChecker from the Services menu to transform
(with a single command) all those Entities into real Unicode
characters. This is done by highlighting the entire text containing
HTML Entities and invoking Services from within Nisus Writer Express:
Services/Unicode/HTML Entities->Unicode, which will do the conversion.
(Nisus Writer Express files can be Saved As in several formats,
including Word). UnicodeChecker is a free OS X app which you can
download from: <http://earthlingsoft.net/UnicodeChecker/index.html>
UTF-8: Then there is Perl scripting which leads to UTF-8 and then to
Unicode. OS X ships with Perl, but for other (non-UNIX) platforms you
may need to download free resources from binary distributions of Perl:
<http://www.cpan.org/ports/index.html>
I hope this helps. If you need any further clarification, please do ask.
Hamid
On Apr 27, 2004, at 09:55, Roberta L. Dougherty wrote:
> Dear friends,
>
> I have Word files for the Mac that use the Jaghbub font for
> diacritics. I
> need to end up with MS Word files for PC in Arial Unicode MS. I see
> on Knut
> Vikor's site for the Jaghbub font that this transfer cannot be done
> successfully ( http://www.hf.uib.no/smi/ksv/jaghbub.html )--can anyone
> out
> there give me specific advice on a workaround?
>
> I also note that the JAIS 1 font set is supposed to work on both
> Windows &
> Mac platforms ( http://www.uib.no/jais/fonts.htm )--has anyone out
> there got
> specific experience doing this? Can files created on one truly be
> successfully be migrated to the other, and is there a "best practice"
> for
> doing this?
>
> Many thanks in advance. Speedy replies will be gratefully received.
>
> Yours,
>
> Robin Dougherty
> Dept. of Oriental Collections
> Bodleian Library
> Oxford OX1 3BG
> United Kingdom
>
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