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Language and Font Control

The Language and Font Control helps you use languages other than English. It lets you select character sets and keyboard layouts and apply those settings throughout the program. 

It can be used to alter character sets and keyboard at any time, but is particularly useful when the Alphabet Editor is also displayed.

The interaction in Windows between languages, fonts, their available character sets, and keyboard layouts is complex and can often be confusing. The Language and Font Control brings these elements together where their interaction can be seen more easily.

What to do

To work with different languages, the three minimum steps are:

1. Select a font and character set which supports your chosen language
2. Apply it throughout the program
3. Make sure you have appropriate settings for your Alphabet

Step 1: Select a font and character set

You can use the Select Language control as a shortcut, or get fuller control with the Change Font and/or Character Set button.

Select Language

This drop-down list has two purposes:
  • It shows all the available languages which your version of Windows supports.  
  • It is a quick way of selecting an appropriate character set. This will be shown in Current Font and Character Set below it.  When you have chosen the right font and character set, you can press the Apply Font and Character Set throughout program button.

    There are more details on Select Language below.

    Current Font and Character Set

    This shows the name and character set of the currently selected font. The Select Language drop-down list (above) lets you change the character set, and the Change Font and/or Character Set button (below) gives you fuller control over both font and character set. When you have chosen the right font and character set, you can go to Step 2.

    Change Font and/or Character Set

    Press this button to get fuller control over your choice of font. You can also see what language scripts are available in any font. A script is the term Windows uses in its Font dialog for a character set.  You can use the Font dialog to change to another script if you wish, as an alternative to using the Select Language drop-down list.  There are more details on Fonts below.

    Step 2: Apply Font and Character Set throughout program

    When you press this button, the font and character set (language script) you have chosen are applied to all parts of the program where your text is entered and displayed.  Concordance's messages and captions remain in the UK English character set.

    Several windows in Concordance allow you to set their fonts independently.  These include the Wordlist view, the Context views, and the Pick and Stop List managers.  Pressing Apply Font and Character Set throughout program will override font settings in these windows.  Hence it is easiest to use Apply Font and Character Set throughout program to change languages and scripts (character sets), and then to apply any cosmetic changes (font colour, size, etc.) directly to the Wordlist and Context views, etc.  This same sequence will be applied to restore your font choices whenever you re-start the program.

    Step 3: Check Alphabet

    Concordance gives you full control over your alphabet and recognises only those characters you include in it. So, in order to work with a chosen language, you must include its special characters in your Alphabet. For more information, see the help on the Alphabet dialog.  The Alphabet dialog is opened from the Text menu.

    To include characters in your Alphabet, you can do one of two things:
      
  • have Concordance add all characters automatically to the Alphabet as they are found when reading your texts;
  • for fuller control, you can add individual characters to the Alphabet yourself.

    To add characters automatically, open the Alphabet dialog. Under 'Characters not in Alphabet, when found in text', choose 'Add to Alphabet'.

    To add individual characters yourself, enter them in the Alphabet dialog directly, or use the Scratchpad here in the Langauge and Font Control. Details immediately below:

    Character Set Details and Scratchpad

    This control has three purposes:
  • It shows all the characters in your chosen font and language script
  • It lets you type characters at the keyboard to test a keyboard layout
  • It lets you copy selected characters directly to your Alphabet

    Press the Show All button to show all the alphabetic characters in that font and character set. 

    Press the Clear button to clear the edit window.  

    To copy characters directly to the Alphabet, select characters using the mouse or keyboard, then press the Copy to Alphabet button.

    Click the right mouse button for a pop-up menu.  The copy command on the menu copies selected characters to the Windows Clipboard, so they can be pasted elsewhere. It does not copy them directly to the Alphabet.


    Current Keyboard

    Press the Switch Keyboard button to switch amongst the keyboard layouts (also known as Input Locales, or input languages) which are installed in Windows.  If only a single keyboard layout is installed, nothing will happen. To install more keyboard layouts, use Regional Settings in Control Panel for Windows NT4.0.  In the Language and Font Control, the button 'Windows Regional Settings' takes you there.  In Windows 98, unfortunately, you need to use the Keyboard applet in Control Panel instead.

    Windows also allows you to switch between installed keyboard layouts using a hot key. The Switch Keyboard button in the Language and Font Control should be used instead because its effects are immediate throughout the program.

    In Windows 98, pressing this button sets the input language for Concordance. In Windows NT, it sets the input language system-wide.


    Examples and Further Details

    Example: Working with Greek text

    To work with Greek text,  choose 'Greek' from the Language drop-down list. Characters in the Character Display will be rendered at once in the Greek character set. When you press the Apply button, any text displayed in other parts of the prorgam will be rendered in the Greek character set.  Provided the text was prepared using a Greek character set, it will now be correctly displayed.

    To type in Greek text, tell Windows to use a Greek keyboard layout by pressing the Switch Keyboard button until Greek is selected (assuming it is available as an installed Input Locale).

    Mixing languages

    Your alphabet can mix characters from different languages as long as they are contained in the same character set.  Windows character sets such as Cyrillic, Greek, and others actually contain all the Western characters as well; hence Greek can be mixed with Western characters by choosing the Greek set. Similarly Cyrillic with Western by choosing the Cyrillic. Greek and Cyrillic, however, reside in different sets.


    Select Language - further details 

    The Select Language drop-down list shows all the languages which are installed in your version of Windows.  If a language you want to use is not present, consult your Windows documentation.  Note also that the presence of certain languages in the list does not mean that Concordance will work correctly with them. At present Concordance supports the Western languages, with limited support for the mid-Eastern and Asian.  

    Support for non-Western languages depends to a large extent on which version of Windows you use, and is much superior in Windows 2000.

    Fonts - further details 

    Not all fonts have a variety of language scripts. As you change fonts, the character set you have chosen (based on your choice of language) will remain in force. If necessary, Windows will substitute a different actual font for the logical font you have chosen so as to optimise what is displayed.  When this happens, the appearance of the font changes but Windows does not alter its displayed name, which can be misleading.


    See also: 
    Alphabet
    Languages, locales, and keyboard layouts - terminology