confused about "language" attribute: inheritance? interact?

[wch]

Good morning, I am a new user, trying to migrate from OpenOffice and Word to NWP. I am a translator, trying to produce documents in two or three languages. I have a bunch of OO and Word hacks for making multiple language documents work, all of which I would like to leave behind. I have figured out, I think, how to set up two languages and can switch between two languages, as long as I am using normal style but I am apparently not understanding how the "language" attribute works and when it is applied.

My Tibetan text is in a different font and different size than my English text. When I add a third language, it too will be in a different font and size. This, I think, creates some of the challenges I am having. I am running NWP 2.0.7 and OSX 10.9.4

I would be grateful for help on the following questions:

1. When I switch between English and Tibetan, and I look at the language palette, I see Tibetan for the Tibetan and English for the English. So far so good. But when I look at the normal style for either block of text, I don't see an attribute label in either case. If language is an attribute of style, where does it appear?

2. I set up a table, say two columns, with the language set to Tibetan. I click into the first cell, switch to Tibetan, and type. So far so good. I tab to the second column, switch to English, type some more. That works, too. But it appears that I have to switch to English each time I tab into the second column and when I look at the table cell style for any cell I don't see a language attribute. So, two questions: Where is the language attribute? and Do I have to create a separate style with the language attribute explicit for (in this case) the second column? In other words, is there a way to avoid having to cycle into English each time I move down the column?

3. I assume that when creating a table, footnote, index entry, etc it gets a language attribute based on the language flag when it was created. Is this the case?

4. Last question: If I type some Tibetan text and insert a footnote, I have to switch to English first, insert the footnote, and type. So far. so good. If I want the footnote to be in Tibetan but in a different size text, do I need to create a language-specific style and apply it after I type the footnote?

My apologies for the long post. I am trying to figure out best practices before I get too far into this and have a bunch of badly formatted document hacks.

Thanks!

[phspaelti]

Hi, and welcome to Nisus.
There are differing views on how best to handle multi-language documents in Nisus (see for example this discussion http://www.nisus.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5769)

My personal suggestion is that you work with styles for each language. Note that once you have set up the languages—as you seem to have done—you can attach the language attribute to any character or paragraph style that you want. If you assign a keyboard short cut to the style, you can switch language by switching style, rather than switching language attribute or keyboard. Quite generally you should switch the style (or the language attribute) and have the keyboard follow, rather than the other way around.

Good morning, I am a new user, trying to migrate from OpenOffice and Word to NWP. I am a translator, trying to produce documents in two or three languages. I have a bunch of OO and Word hacks for making multiple language documents work, all of which I would like to leave behind. I have figured out, I think, how to set up two languages and can switch between two languages, as long as I am using normal style but I am apparently not understanding how the "language" attribute works and when it is applied.

My Tibetan text is in a different font and different size than my English text. When I add a third language, it too will be in a different font and size. This, I think, creates some of the challenges I am having. I am running NWP 2.0.7 and OSX 10.9.4

This is exactly why you should work via a style. You can set the font and size and language attribute as part of the style definition, and then switch styles and everything will switch together. So create 3 styles—paragraph styles might be okay in your case, since you won't be mixing them in the same paragraph. You can keep Normal for English or make a new one, then make a style Tibetan, and one Sanskrit. You can give each a keyboard short-cut which can be assigned directly in the style sheet window.

I would be grateful for help on the following questions:

1. When I switch between English and Tibetan, and I look at the language palette, I see Tibetan for the Tibetan and English for the English. So far so good. But when I look at the normal style for either block of text, I don't see an attribute label in either case. If language is an attribute of style, where does it appear?

Well in a normal set-up Nisus doesn't include a language attribute, and it treats Normal as being in the system language. If you want you can add the language attribute (e.g. U.S. English) to the definition of Normal. Then every time you apply Normal the language will switch back to that language.
Alternately you can define new styles based on Normal and specify the language on the these 'child' styles: (e,g. "Normal (English)", "Normal (Tibetan)", etc.)

2. I set up a table, say two columns, with the language set to Tibetan. I click into the first cell, switch to Tibetan, and type. So far so good. I tab to the second column, switch to English, type some more. That works, too. But it appears that I have to switch to English each time I tab into the second column and when I look at the table cell style for any cell I don't see a language attribute. So, two questions: Where is the language attribute? and Do I have to create a separate style with the language attribute explicit for (in this case) the second column? In other words, is there a way to avoid having to cycle into English each time I move down the column?

When you choose the language by attribute, this amounts to a momentary choice (like turning on italic or bold). So you keep having to tell Nisus where you want what.
If you have styles you can select the whole column or columns and pre-apply the style. Then as you tab from column to column the language will switch according to the applied style.

3. I assume that when creating a table, footnote, index entry, etc it gets a language attribute based on the language flag when it was created. Is this the case?

Be careful here: by "flag" do you mean the language attribute (shown in the status bar at the bottom of the window? The "flag" in the apple menu bar is just the keyboard that you are using. You can type in any language with any keyboard. Only the language attribute gets remembered.
So as long as you mean language attribute, that is correct.

4. Last question: If I type some Tibetan text and insert a footnote, I have to switch to English first, insert the footnote, and type. So far. so good. If I want the footnote to be in Tibetan but in a different size text, do I need to create a language-specific style and apply it after I type the footnote?

You can switch languages at any time, and should do so according to the logic of your document. If you are inserting a footnote in a Tibetan paragraph, but the text of the footnote is in English, you should switch the language once you have moved to the footnote. If your footnotes are generally all in English, you can attach the English language attribute to the (special) footnote style, and then Nisus will automatically switch to English, and return to Tibetan when you go back to the paragraph. If you need to insert the occasional Tibetan word or phrase in the middle of the English text, create a character style Tibetan, and use that to switch to Tibetan.

My apologies for the[ long post. I am trying to figure out best practices before I get too far into this and have a bunch of badly formatted document hacks.

No problem.
By the way, it is relatively easy to clean-up bad formatting in Nisus, if you get into the habit of using Find/Replace. In your case you are lucky, since your languages all use different scripts, it should be quite easy to find them (using Wildcards), so you can easily retro-actively apply Tibetan style to the parts in the relevant script.

[phspaelti]

One more thing: If you generally alternate between the three languages (1 paragraph Tibetan, 1 Sanskrit, 1 English, repeat) you can set up the paragraph styles to have the other as the "Following Style". Then when you hit return, the next paragraph will automatically have the next style, and the language will switch accordingly.

[xiamenese]

I agree with Philip. I work mainly in English and Chinese, though occasionally French too.

But even though I’m only using two languages, I have found the best solution is to set up not only parallel paragraph styles for English and Chinese — each style including language, font, weight, size, etc. with ruler and leading etc. settings and a “next paragraph” setting — but also a “Chinese” character style, including font, weight and size, which is useful for when I have a phrase in Chinese within an English paragraph, for instance.

These styles are set up in my Nisus New File so that they are immediately loaded into any new document I start in Nisus, but they are also available for import into any document created outside NWP but opened in NWP. And since NWP gives you a way of selecting all text in a particular font/size/etc. by putting the cursor in an example and using the status bar icon to select all text with that font, it’s easy to convert all the selected text to your chosen style by the click of the mouse or through the keyboard shortcut.

Once it’s set up, with keyboard shortcuts assigned, it makes working with two languages a doddle; there is no reason why, with a bit of preliminary work, it shouldn’t be just as easy working with three languages.

NWP is brilliant at this.

Mark

[wch]

Philip, thanks for the thorough reply; Mark for the followup. I am going to read it again, more carefully and make sure I understand (and can do) what you have suggested. I will post a followup if I have more questions.

BTW, you answered my unasked question, too: should keyboard change follow language or language follow keyboard? Thanks!