LINGUIST List 4.749

Fri 24 Sep 1993

Sum: P-marker, Fonts

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1. David Silva, P-Marker Font Summary
2. Bill Bennett, Linguistics fonts

Thank you to all those who replied to my query regarding the P-marker font.
As a number of folks requested that I post a summary, here it is:

The most common response went something like this: * If you're
using a Macintosh, the easiest way to do graphics is to use the Drawing Tool
that's part of MicroSoft Word 5.0/.1. * After some experimenting with the
latest version of Word, I have to agree--it's quick, simple, adequate,
sufficiently pretty, etc., at least for small-to-middling trees. I can well
imagine (as a couple of people suggested) that managing larger structures
could be more difficult.

Other suggestions were to use a graphics program such as MacDraw or Superpaint
and then paste the trees into the text. I've done this in the past, but I
found it rather time consuming, particularly if you can't run Multifinder (for
whatever reasons) and you need to quit in-and-out of applications.

Jim Black suggests a compromise of sorts:

 "I use a graphics program to draw a variety of branching
 figures, then save them as Glossary items in Microsoft
 Word. ... If you draw them to correspond to a tab spacing,
 they can be positioned precisely, so long as your tab
 settings are quite dense."

For those of us who have put off getting to know about glossaries, now's the
time to sit down with the manual!

Three folks mentioned a relatively new desk accessory program called
Expressionist. From what I can tell, Expressionist was designed for
mathemeticians and the like to draw formulas. As Yuji Nakazato writes:

 "One of the symbols in the program is [for] drawing:
 A
 / \
 B C
 This DA is very flexible and the above simple tree can be
 'nested' -- that is, you can add branches under node B
 and node C! Also, you can increase the number of branches
 from one node..."

Sounds good to me! Cathy Ball was kind enough to provide an
address for those of you interested in Expressionist:

 Prescience Corporation
 939 Howard Street, #204
 San Francisco, CA 94104

I've not written to these people yet, so I'm not sure what to expect.

A final note on Expressionist--Joseph Tomei indicates that "using it for PS
trees is like killing a mosquito with a howitzer..." Apparently Expressionist
is a pretty powerful DA, which means that it _could_ be used for other types of
linguistic graphics. I leave this question to future research.

Chris Culy wrote to let me know of a HyperCard parser that he's written ...

 "... which allows you to type in any phrase structure
 rules and a 'lexicon'. It will then parse sentences/
 phrases you type in, returning a labelled bracketing,
 which can then be drawn as a tree."

For more details, please contact him directly: chris-culyuiowa.edu

A final suggestion was to use Symantec's "More II". (No other info was
provided.)

As regards the P-Marker font itself, I had a couple of offers from folks
willing to send me a copy (for which I thank you), but I never found out WHERE
the font came from and WHERE I can get an original copy. (Could it be in the
U Mich archives?) Any info on this topic would be appreciated.

Happy Drawing, _Y'all_. (Sorry. I couldn't help myself.)

--David Silva (davidling.uta.edu)

 -COMPUTER FONTS-
The impressive universality that is available from the LINGUIST BB!

This summary of responses will be in two parts. This will be the end of this
enquiry for the present. I have more information than I know what to do with!

(1) Responses to my -cri de coeur- included
 Cathy Ball <cballedu.georgetown.acc.guvax>
 Laurie Bauer <Laurie.Bauernz.vuw>
 Jim Black <jblackca.mun.ucs.kean>
 John Bro <broedu.ufl.circa.elm>
 Keith Denning <denningedu.emich.emunix>
 Piet Martens <pmertenscc3.kuleuven.ac.be>
 Thor S Nilsen <thor.s.nilsen.no.tdh>
 Dilworth B. Parkinson <parkinsonDedu.byu.yvax>
 Chen Shu-fen <sfchenuxa.cso.uiuc.edu>
 Ron Southerland <southerlca.ucalgary.acs>
 Joe Tomei <jtomeiedu.uoregon.oregon>

Many thanks

(2) Some general conclusions (e & e.o) - my own interpretations.
1. I do not know whether I expressed my query about IPA/US phonetic fonts for
 PC or Mac unclearly, but it seems that the great majority of linguists are
 using a Mac. No respondent specified other than IPA fonts. I assume my
 friends in the US design their own Bloch/Trager? And I would hope they do so
 if they wish to denote the French front rounded and back mid vowels!!

2. My main unhappiness with Chiwriter, which I am using at the moment, is that
 screen fonts are separate from printing fonts - but this is certainly also
 the case with other fonts/programs.

3. A PC that is for fonts or non-Roman alphabets generally requires Windows.
 Chiwriter (for me on a PC) does not so.

4. In general (I SENSE) freeware fonts arouse widely diversive reactions, from
 excellent to unsatisfactory.

5. Commercial programs mentioned with often effusive favour were for Mac:
 FONTOGRAPHER (v 4.0) (address: Altsys Corp., 269 W. Renner Parkway,
 Richardson TX 75080) (street price $258), NISUS v.3.47, FONTMONGER v.1.5.7
 (address:Ares Software Corp., P.O. Box 4667, Foster City, CA 94404-4667)
 Internet <aresswaol.com> (price range $100-149.95); FONTastic; mention also
 of FontStudio from Letraset (new?).
 IPA Plus appears to be available from UCLA, but no more specific address has
 been given; Powerpak, which is said to work with MS Word, MS Works, WP,
 Letterperfect, PlanPerfect is published by Atech Software.

 NISUS (for Mac) address is: Nisus Software Inc., 107 S. Cedros Ave., Solana
 Beach, CA 92075, USA

 Mac IPA and non-Roman alphabets from
 Ecological Linguistics, P.O. Box 15156, Washington DC 20003
 internet <ECOLINGapplelink.apple.com>
 and at the address: Lloyd Anderson who has IPA and non-Roman alphabets.

6. One source of IPA suggested was via John Lawler at host machine
 <mac.archive.umich.edu>.

7. S(ummer)I(nstitute) of L(inguistics), address:SIL Printing Arts Department
 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd
 Dallas, TX 75236.
 SIL has: Encore IPA fonts (freeware)
 and Encore fonts (commercial).

 SIL Encore IPA fonts are up-to-date with Kiel 1990. They are available in
 three typefaces:
 SIL Doulos (cf. Times);
 SIL Sophia (cf. Helvetica);
 SIL Manuscript (monowidth).

 F(ile)T(ransfer)P(Protocol) FTP can fetch these fonts for Mac
 sumex-aim.stanford.edu
 /info-mac/font/sil-ipa.hqx.

 mac.archive.umich.edu
 /pub/mac/system.extensions/font/type1/silipafonts.sit.hqx

 and FTP for Windows fonts
 msdos.archive.umich.edu
 /pub/msdos/mswindows/fonts/sil-ipa.zip

 (European equivalents:
 For Mac: triton.lew.kuleuven.ac.be
 /pub/fonts/mac/sil-ipa.hqx
 For Windows: triton.lew.kuleuven.ac.be
 /pub/fonts/windows/sil-ipa.zip)

 The fonts can be ordered, from the address given above in Dallas,
 on diskette (with documentation) for $5 (plus postage: $2 in US, $5
 elsewhere). Another respondent advised that the IPA fonts were free, but the
 complete font library cost $60 plus postage.

 I am informed that it is useful to have an editing program with the SIL
 fonts.

8. Font versions of Adobe's Times or Stone for DOS and Windows:
 FontShop, 401 Wellington St West, Toronto, Ontario M5V 1E8, Canada.

9. The following addresses might be of interest:
 IPA fonts for WP5.1 (DOS)
 M.A.P. Systems, 18100 Bay Rd, #100, Houston, TX 77058.

 Linguist's Software. P.O. Box 580, Edmonds, WA 98020-0580,

10.It has struck me that, while there are useful book reviews on the BB, no
 regular report/review of linguistic fonts takes place. It is not the
 shortage of fonts which is remarkable but the confusing medley of sources,
 and the uncertainty of their ease/elegance of applicability.

Bill Bennett.