Extra characters available to transliterate from Armenian?

G

Guest

I'm using Word 2002 in Office XP Professional. Is it possible to get extra
unicode characters in Word for transliterating from Armenian (i.e. unicode
characters to be inserted via the Insert > Symbol command)? Checking against
a printed source of all the characters used to transliterate Armenian to
roman script, I see Word includes many of them, but not all. For instance,
the t + asper (as a single character) is included, but the c + asper is not;
neither is any other character + asper (c-caron, c, p, k, h, and s seem to
be required for Armenian), though strangely the asper does not seem to be
available as a separate character either, so one cannot even insert it
manually after the letter. Also missing are the j + caron, r + subdot and
the r + superdot. If the unicode characters aren't available, is there some
combination of keystrokes that can be used to construct them from the
available characters?
 
J

Jezebel

The range of characters available via Insert > Symbol is a function of the
font you choose to select from. This is outside Word's control -- it
supports the full Unicode system, and will use whatever glyphs the selected
font contains. Install a font that contains the glyphs you want.
 
G

Guest

Many thanks Jezebel. Any thoughts on which font would have those characters I
list below? From what I've been able to find, commercial font sites simply
list the most common characters, so it's impossible to tell.
 
J

Jezebel

Start with http://www.unicode.org/ -- have a look through the code sheets so
you know what you're looking for. Armenian is described in section 7.4.

Then do a Google on the specifics. Try searching for eg 'verjaket' or
'Mesopian orthography'. You're right that commercial fonts won't help; but
there are plenty of academics who create fonts too. Have a look at the
(free) Cardo typeface which contain --

Basic Latin (95), Latin-1 Supplement (96), Latin Extended-A (128), Latin
Extended-B (52), IPA Extensions (96), Spacing Modifier Letters (80),
Combining Diacritical Marks (112), Greek (124), Cyrillic (2), Hebrew (86),
Arabic (10), Georgian (1), Runic (81), Phonetic Extensions (17), Combining
Diacritical Marks Supplement (2), Latin Extended Additional (88), Greek
Extended (233), General Punctuation (65), Superscripts and Subscripts (9),
Currency Symbols (6), Letterlike Symbols (13), Number Forms (4), Arrows
(14), Mathematical Operators (24), Miscellaneous Technical (36), Box Drawing
(1), Geometric Shapes (8), Miscellaneous Symbols (31), Dingbats (6),
Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-A (9), Supplemental Arrows-A (2),
Supplemental Arrows-B (6), Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-B (2),
Supplemental Punctuation (24), CJK Symbols and Punctuation (12), Alphabetic
Presentation Forms (53), Specials (1), Aegean Numbers (2), Ancient Greek
Numbers (75), Old Italic (35), Gothic (27), Ancient Greek Musical Notation
(70), Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols (13).
 
G

Guest

Thanks again. I've looked through unicode and found the r-variants in "Latin
extended additional", and I suspect all the aspers are done as "combining
characters".
cheers!
 

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