Category: Computing

Here’s a couple of notes on how I’m editing unicode Coptic in Microsoft Word 2007.

I’m using Wazu Japan’s Comprehensive Unicode Test Page for Coptic a lot.  This allows me to identify characters and unicode character sets.

I find I can enter any character in word by just typing the four-character code, and hitting Alt-X.  So if I type 0307 after a Coptic character and hit Alt-X, I get a diacritical dot above the character.  Wazu’s page tells me what the codes are!  What I have actually done is to record a macro, so I move to the character and hit Alt-1, which runs a macro that types 0307 and hits alt-X.  It saves keystrokes.

OK; I’ve manually replaced unicode accents (code 0300) with dots on a couple of fragments, and I’m getting fed up.  Can I do a global replace?  I think so.  This microsoft page (I had to use the Google cache version, as Microsoft tried to divert me to some useless registration process) seems to tell you.  You can search for any unicode character using this:

 ^Unnnn where nnnn is the character code

Let’s try it: ^U0300 in the Find box… and it doesn’t work.  ^U is not allowed.  I try ^u, lower case, and that is allowed but finds nothing.  Rats.  It seems I am not the first to discover this.  Not merely must it be lower-case; it must be decimal, not the hexadecimal (base-16) codes supplied by charmap or the Wazu page. 

OK, let’s try.  A hex converter is here.  Hex 0300 is decimal 0768, it seems.  Let’s try ^u0768.  And … nope.  That doesn’t work either.

 Boy this wastes a lot of time!  Thanks Microsoft.

UPDATE: Persistence pays off.  Well, I have a workaround.  You cannot replace unicode combining characters like dots and accents.  But … you can replace the character and the dot together.  I have just copied an e+accent into Find What (it looks like garbage when it arrives – but no matter) and copied an e+dot into Replace, and it worked.  It replaced 462 instances, indeed.  So… I can do a lot of these that way.

Still annoyed that Word doesn’t deal with it properly, tho.

A few minutes ago I wrote about Alphabetum, the commercial Coptic font which uses the Bohairic typeface, and the way in which this limited people working with Coptic.  This led me to think about the idea of commissioning a free font. Of course really this is something that a grant body should make happen. 

A hunt around the web revealed that Keft, the free Coptic unicode font with the Sahidic typeface, was designed by Michael Everson of evertype.com.  It seems that it was commissioned by the International Association of Coptic Studies, whose website is rather out of date and does not say so.  I wonder what it cost?  It seems that Stephen Emmell was responsible, and it sounds like a long and arduous process was involved!

Both these fonts support unicode 5.1 which matters for things like dots over letters (diacritics).  Few of the other free fonts do.

I do wonder a bit about Coptic studies.  Syriac studies is pretty free-wheeling, everyone is friendly, everyone wants to encourage people, and everyone just pitches in.  In Coptic studies there seems to be a lot of stuffiness, a lot of “I’m far too important to reply” and general crustiness.  I got that feeling again reading the stuff about Keft.  Maybe that’s why I’ve never paid any attention to Coptic.

I’ve had complaints from my translator that the Keft unicode font for Coptic isn’t that “Bohairic” in appearance.  Well, I could pass a Bohairic book in the street and not recognise one!  But I do recognise a difference in letter forms between Keft and what is used by De Lagarde in his 19th century printed text.

Quite by accident I have come across the Alphabetum font.  It’s not free, but not expensive.  Here’s a bitmap comparing the fonts; top one is De Lagarde; the middle one is Alphabetum; bottom one is Keft. 

 The Keft font is apparently a “Sahidic” Coptic font.  The New Athena Unicode font is of the same type.

There’s some stuff on entering Coptic unicode here.  It looks as if I’m going to need to do it.  And I have just found these links by Christian Askeland, which look good.  These led me here, to some more fonts, of which only Arial Coptic seemed like De Lagarde, and the diacriticals didn’t seem right.  And this in turn gave this test page.

One difference I can see between De Lagarde and Alphabetum is the diacriticals.  It’s not that easy to find out about these, I find.  I wonder if the difference is important?

I need to find a basic grammar that is good on these things.

UPDATE: I have also found a wikipedia test page for Coptic in unicode 5.1, which lists a number of fonts as well-supported although is still vague on typefaces.  Quivira is listed, and is a VERY nice font; but Sahidic again.  Analecta is another new one to me.