> >Michael - Kevin Donnelly suggests (below) that you might have some >ideas on this subject? If there is a recognised 8 bit code for the >dotted constants, I'd prefer to use that rather than to invent my own. >(Especially as I don't know any Breton or Galacian!). Attaching a font >to that character set is, of course, the next problem...! He enclosed the following exchange between himself and Caoimhi/n O/ Donnai/le. >Subject: Re: ISO Celtic? > >A Ruadhrai/, > >>Question: Is there an ISO Celtic character set? (analogous to ISO >>Latin 1 for most Western European languages and ISO Latin 2 for >>Middle European). It would have characters in the range 160-256 >>for the "dot overstrike" (se/imhiu/) forms of b, d, m and t. >>(And the circumflex accent in Welsh). If so, where can I get it? > >There is no ISO Celtic character set as such. The only ISO character >set standards which cover the dotted consonants and the Welsh accented >'w' and 'y' are: > >ISO 6937 (if I remember the number right) >This is an 8-bit standard which is essentially defunct, except for its >use in the Teletext standard, and for it being written into the >standard for use in X.400 header fields! It is unusually in having a >concept of "non-spacing diacritics", which is how it manages to cope >with all the accents within the confines of 8-bits. However, this idea >was ahead of the software mechanisms used by programs of its time, so >it was essentially never used. It also defined a "repertoire" of >allowable letter-accent combinations, and this may not have actually >included the Welsh accents or the dotted consonants - I am not sure. > >ISO 10646 >This is the new multibyte standard which just came in last year. It >essentially covers all the characters in the world, including Chinese, >Japanese, etc, using 16 bits for each character. It is going to be >extremely important, but it will be several years yet before all the >world's software gets converted from 8-bit character processing to 16 >bit! > >The nearest to what you are asking for is a character set produced by >Michael Everson (everson@irlearn.ucd.ie), essentially for use on the >Macintosh. He may have ideas of getting it registered under the ISO 2022 >(I forget the number, but something like that) scheme. He has produced >fonts for this character set on the Macintosh, and I think they are >available in TrueType format. They are sold by his small company, >"Everson Gunn Teoranta", for a reasonable price. There is no official _ISO_ Celtic character set. There are several standards which serve _all the_ Celtic languages and I am writing an article which will publish and explain the differences between them. Basically, there is a simple character set for modern Celtic languages, and an extended version of that for the Gaelic Script. There are manifestations of this for the Macintosh and for Windows encoding, which means there are two codepage standards suitable for Mac and PC. I'll be publishing this information on GAELIC-L and WELSH-L when the article is available. If anyone has any urgent encoding needs before then and needs to know the codepoints for everything, let me know and I'll forward that information sooner. Three fonts come together in a package called "CeltScript 1" which fully support the Celtic standard: Ceanannas (based on the Book of Kells), Doire (based on the monospace typewriter font), and Duibhlinn (based on the usual book face). Postscript and TrueType formats for the Mac, and TrueType format for Windows 3.1. IRL100.00 plus 21.00 VAT for the set. "CeltScript 2" is in preparation. >>If so, has anyone produced TrueType fonts for An Chlo/ Tradisiu/nta >>using that character set? > >Apart from Michael Everson's fonts, there is a "Clo/ Gaelach" font >recently composed by Colum Twomey and placed in the public domain. I >have left a copy of it on > > yeats.csufresno.edu : gaelach.zip > >It is well designed, by all accounts, but it doesn't have dotted >consonants or Welsh accents - just acutes and graves on the vowels. >And due to a bug in the font design software it lacks lower-case >"u-grave". I corrected the u-grave error and posted the Mac and Windows versions to the GAELIC-L archives. It's called "Tuamach". Caoimhi/n said to me that he hadn't been able to use the Windows version, but we never worked out why. (An bhfuil leagan 3.1 agat, a Chaoimhi/n?) If we can figure out what's wrong we should be able to replace the file on the yeats machine with Tuamach. Has anyone else used the files from GAELIC-L? Also in the GAELIC-L archives is the bitmap font Gaillimh, which also conforms to the Mac Celtic Extended Roman character set. >Some TeX fonts for the "Clo/ Gaelach" have recently been added to the >GAELIC-L library. They are designed by someone in Edinburgh and have >also been available for some time in some TeX ftp site. I have no idea what encoding or what characters are in these fonts, since I don't run TeX. Michael Everson School of Architecture, UCD; Richview, Clonskeagh; Dublin 14; E/ire Phone: +353 1 706-2745 Fax: +353 1 283-8908 Home: +353 1 478-2597