Nisus Writer Pro - Manual (Page 47)

Creating Documents 27
Writing in Multiple Languages
Though it is invisible, “Language” is an attribute of your text. If applied correctly, changing the
language of a portion of the text changes the
• input method (keyboard),
• dictionary and/or thesaurus (if there is one for that language),
• font (if appropriate),
• QuickFix typo and related corrections (if you have set them).
While Nisus Writer Pro is set up “out of the box” to write in American English, it supports writing in
any version of English (or other European romanic
2 and Cyrillic languages), or in a mixture of these
languages. It supports writing in languages where the shape of the alphabetic character changes
depending on its position in relation to other characters (Devanagari, Thai, etc.—similar in concept
to “
script
” in romanic handwriting where letters following the
b
,
o
,
v
and
w
have slightly different
shapes because these letters end above the baseline). It also supports writing in languages where
writing is syllabic or ideographic rather than alphabetic such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
Due to limitations in Bidirectional text handling in Panther, full Bidirectional text manipulation
(Arabic, Hebrew, Ladino, Pashtun, Persian, Urdu, or Yiddish) is available in Nisus Writer Pro only
when run in Mac OS X 10.4.x (Tiger) and above.
The Macintosh uses the concept of "script" to refer to a variety of phenomena:
• instructions for the computer to follow (as in the script of a play or a movie)
• the shape of certain romanic fonts (as in the word "script" above
• methods of writing
• “left to right” such as English (or other European Romanic languages)
• “right to left” such as Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Ladino, Persian, Syriac, Yiddish
• where the shape of the alphabetic character changes depending on its position in relation to
other characters such (Arabic and Thai, as well as with a few characters in English
• where writing is syllabic or ideographic rather than alphabetic such as Chinese, Japanese
and Korean.
Nisus Writer Pro supports Unicode which is explained in the “Glossary of Useful Terms” on page
461. It can mix and match characters from any language in any document, page, paragraph,
sentence and/or word.
Set up language support in Nisus Writer Pro
Nisus Writer Pro enables you to edit your text in any language the Macintosh supports.
This allows you to use specialized dictionaries, thesauri (if available), a localized keyboard (input
method) and a specific font for characters unique to that language if the primary font (the one you
have set in that document (or the Nisus New File)) does not have them. This also enables you to use
the QuickFix Preferences you set in relation to that language. For more information about QuickFix
see “Determine What QuickFix Fixes” on page 385.
You will achieve best results in writing in the language of your choice if you take a few minutes to
set the Languages preference of Nisus Writer Pro in advance.
!
Remember, “Language” is an attribute of your text.
1. Choose the menu command Nisus Writer Pro > Preferences… and click Languages at the top
of the dialog.
Along the left column you will see those languages you have enabled in the International panel in
the System Preferences. You can add or subtract your own “designer” language (Tok Pisin
3 , Jawi 4 ,
Syriac 5 , Klingon 6 for example). If a language you would like to use is missing from the list, click +
(plus) or Add Custom (for a “designer” language) and add it to the list.
2 Romanic refers to those languages that use the Latin alphabet regardless of their linguistic relationships.
3 The creole language spoken in northern mainland Papua New Guinea.
4 The nearly extinct Australian Aboriginal language of Western Australia.
5 An Eastern Aramaic language that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent.
6 The constructed language spoken by Klingons in the fictional Star Trek universe.