LeedsBit Fonts and Macros


This package is designed for use with Word For Windows version 2 or above.

It enables the user to do multilingual word-processing in any combination of over 60 languages which use the Latin alphabet.

The package consists of five TrueType fonts with identical typefaces, plus a set of Word For Windows macros to enable the user to type all the non-English characters easily. 

It was produced by:
				Alec McAllister
				University Computing Service
				University of Leeds
				LS2 9JT
				United Kingdom
				email: T.A.McAllister@Leeds.AC.UK


1. The LeedsBit Fonts

These fonts are based on Bitstream Charter, a public-domain font made by Bitstream Inc.

Four fonts  EuroWest, EuroEast, EuroSouth and EuroNorth  correspond to the standard codepages ISO 8859/1, /2, /3 and /4 (ECMA-94 Latin 1, 2, 3 and 4) respectively.

The fifth font, ExtraChars1, contains accented and special characters which are not included in the standard codepages. It does not correspond to any standard layout, but, wherever possible, characters occupy positions where similar characters are found in standard layouts. Unfortunately, this has not been possible in every case, but documents made with this font should still be fairly readable when displayed in other fonts.

The LeedsBit fonts contain all the accented and special characters used in all the 41 (more-or-less) European modern languages which are listed by the ISO and which use the Latin alphabet.

That is: French, German, Polish, Maltese, Turkish, Greenlandic, Afrikaans, etc. are covered, but not Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, etc.

The fonts also cover many medival languages (e.g. Old Norse, Middle High German), plus many symbols used in transliterating Arabic, Sanskrit, Thai, Pinyin, etc.

If you discover that any characters are missing, of have any suggestions for extra characters, please let me know, and if possible I will incorporate them into the next release.

(Since the launch of this package a week ago, the total number of suggestions is currently 34, so there will definitely be another version, probably during autumn 1994. One Latin-alphabet language is not yet catered for in these fonts: Vietnamese, which would need an extra font to accommodate the large number of accents and tone-marks. It will be covered in the next version.)

Characters from any or all of these fonts can be used in the same document, and even within the same word, without any differences being visible to the reader.

2. The Macros

The macros are housed in the files LEEDSBIT.DOT and LEEDS000.DOT . These files are identical except that in LEEDS000.DOT none of the macros is allocated to a key; it is intended only as a backup, and need not be installed on your PC.

In LEEDSBIT.DOT, the macros enable the user to type any accented character with a single extra keystroke.

For example, to type E with an acute accent, first type E, then press the "magic" key which runs the "LeedsBitAcute" macro.  This substitutes the E-acute () character. This technique follows the natural way of writing accented characters, which is to write the basic character first, then to add the accent.

If the required accented character is found in the font currently in use, then the macro inserts it, but if the font does not contain that character, the macro "fetches" it from one of the other fonts in the set, then returns to the user's chosen default font. In other words, the user does not need to know (or care) which font contains the accented characters.


An Apology

The package was produced in a tearing hurry to meet colleagues' immediate needs, with extra characters and accents appearing right up to the last moment, so the macros almost certainly contain bugs. They are also huge and inelegant. For this, I apologise.

However, my colleagues insisted that they needed a rough-and-ready package at once, rather than wait months for something better. Please inform me of any serious faults and I will correct them in the next version, which should be a good deal smaller and neater.


Terms of Use

This package is shareware, and copyright rests with The University of Leeds, but I do not seek any personal gain from it. You are free to use it without charge and without restriction for as long as you like.

If you find it useful, then please say so by sending me a letter or an email message. The postage stamps are given to charities (which sell them to collectors to raise money for good causes), and the messages help persuade my boss to allow me to do more work of this kind.

(This is especially important just now, because I need permission to spend time on my next project, which is to produce a similar fonts/macro package for the Cyrillic languages. The one after that will be Mongolian, probably followed by various Indian languages, then, if I can crack the problem of right-to-left wrap-arounds, Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi etc.)

If you think that the package is worth money, then please send whatever you think it is worth or whatever you can afford, whichever is the smaller. Cheques or money-orders should be sent to me (so that I can show them to my boss), but made payable to "The University of Leeds", not to me: any benefits will go to my long-suffering employer, the British Taxpayer.

If you can't afford money, but would like to show appreciation anyway, please send a second-hand paperback detective or adventure story or historical novel in any language other than English. We have an excellent library here, with the world's finest literature, but what we don't have is light reading: Sherlock Holmes in Russian, the Portuguese equivalent of "Treasure Island", Japanese adventure stories, Norwegian joke books, etc. (If I may be permitted a little self-indulgence, I am a fan of Leslie Charteris's character, The Saint ...)
Restrictions

The only restrictions placed on the package are these.


A. Commercial Use

By all means use the package for commercial purposes, but please play fair: companies can afford more than impoverished students or academics. In such circumstances, I suggest a payment of 20 pounds sterling or 35 dollars US per user.

B. Site Licences

If the package is to be made available to everyone on a large site or in a large organisation such as a university, some payment seems appropriate. I suggest 100 pounds sterling to cover up to 100 users on one site; 200 pound for up to 500 users, and 300 pounds for an unlimited number of users.

C. Copying

You are free to copy the package and give it to anyone at all, but you must not sell it. If you do copy it, please copy all the files, including this documentation.



How To Install The Package

1.	Install the fonts (LEEDSE*.TTF files) in the normal way, using Control Panel.

2.	Copy the file LEEDSBIT.DOT into whichever directory contains your copy of Word For Windows.


How To Use The Package

1.	Start Word For Windows.

2.	Open or create a file.

3.	Use File ... Template to associate the file with LEEDSBIT.DOT .

From that moment, all the macros allocated to keys on the Number Keypad will work. Two other macros (LeedsBitTilde and LeedsBitDefaultFont) will work, but will not be allocated to any particular key. You can allocate these two macros to keys of your own choice by running the macro AutoAssignToKey. (Please refer to the file LEEDSKEY.DOC, which explains this.)

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge a debt to Peter Gentry and Andrew Fountain, the authors of the excellent shareware package WinGreek, for the idea of adding accents after normal characters, instead of the traditional (infuriating) technique of pressing some hot key before the letter. I recommend WinGreek to Windows-users interested in multilingual computing. WinGreek handles Greek, Coptic and Hebrew, as well as many Latin-alphabet languages.

I would also like to thank Bitstream Inc for placing the original font, from which these fonts were made, in the public domain. In acknowledgement, I have named them LeedsBit.

Thanks also to Tams Sej for spotting the absence of Romanian A-breve, now corrected.
