NOTE: this software is for Classic Mac OS (eg: OS 9) and cannot be used on Mac OS X.
Nisus Writer Classic is no longer for sale. This page is only for archival purposes.
- Be sure you have the Language Kit installed in your System for the language in which you wish to enter or edit text.
- Choose New from the File menu.
- Choose the font for the language you wish to use from the Font menu.
- Type away!
Switch between languages by changing the font:
You can switch between English and any other script loaded in your System. Just choose a font of that script from the Font menu.
- Cyrillic fonts appear in Roman characters
- Arabic or Persian fonts appear in Arabic characters (in El Kahira, the Arabic System's version of Chicago)
- Hebrew (though not Yiddish) fonts generally appear in Hebrew characters (in Eilat, the Hebrew System's version of Chicago).
- Fonts of the East European languages, Indic languages and Thai appear in Romanic characters (in the appropriate version of Chicago)
- Names of various Chinese, Japanese, and Korean fonts appear in both Romanic characters (in a variant of Geneva) and characters of those scripts.
If you use this method, changing your font changes the script automatically. If a particular script system has more than one keyboard entry method, Nisus Writer automatically chooses the keyboard you had previously selected.
If an Arabic, Hebrew or Persian paragraph is to follow an English paragraph (or the reverse), you can write a macro that can easily
switch fonts and direction between paragraphs.
When you select a font of a particular script, the Keyboard menu displays an icon for the country, culture, or input method identified with that script.
NOTE: Many font utilities such as Adobe Type Reunion and Suitcase are not Script Manager aware and prevent display of the fonts in the Font menu by script and alphabetized within each script group. Instead, they force the Font menu to list the fonts according to a strict alphabetical order that uses "internal" software naming conventions and not the names visual to the user.
Switch between languages by changing the script:
You can always choose the keyboard representing the script (and input method) using the Keyboard menu. Some script systems have multiple input methods.
- Press COMMAND-SPACE to circulate through the scripts installed while retaining the selected keyboard for that script.
- Press COMMAND-OPTION-SPACE to circulate through the keyboards installed for a particular script.
- Choose a keyboard from the menu to change scripts, Nisus Writer selects a font and attributes as follows:
- In a new document with no text of that script, you get the "system" font, a localized variant of Geneva in that script.
- If you already have text in that script, you get the attributes of the text in the script closest to your insertion point.
The active script and the insertion point
When you type in the midst of text of a particular script, what you type takes on the surrounding script and character attributes. You can have particular script attributes become part of your insertion point. To set this option, choose Preferences... from the Edit menu and check Languages in the left column of the dialog.
- Click Change Keyboard Script to Match Font (of text in which the insertion point appears) to have the Keyboard menu change to match that surrounding script.
If you do not set this option, the keyboard will retain its setting until you change it explicitly.
- Click Change the Font to Match Keyboard Script if you want fonts to automatically match the keyboard script.
When you type using the U.S. keyboard, the font always changes automatically to match the keyboard script. Some scripts, however, allow you to enter text with a different script than the font. For example, you can type in a Japanese font (like Osaka) even if the keyboard script is Roman. In this case your characters enter in the Romanic range of the ASCII set and appear in a variant of Geneva, and the Spelling Checker should not recognize this text as English.
Script Sensitivity
Script sensitivity is an important issue in documents containing multiple scripts. Most operations like find and replace or change of font have meaning only for one language at a time. Script sensitivity means that Nisus Writer is aware of the scripts involved when modifying your text.
Change the font of a text selection with varying scripts:
Choose any font of the script you want to change.
The change affects only the text in the script that matches the font. For example, in a selection including Arabic and Roman text, if you choose Times, Nisus Writer only changes the Roman text.
To overrule script sensitivity in changing fonts:
Press SHIFT while you choose the font name from the Font menu.
The font changes and any characters you selected will appear in the new font.
More on multilingual text editing...
More on WorldScript and Language Kits...
To the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions).
To the Tips Table of Contents.
