Lingua
Lingua is a set of add-on capabilities to the Nota Bene Workstation
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Lingua provides a full range of functionality in Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and Arabic, as well as an extensive character inventory which includes the International Phonetic Alphabet and characters used in African languages. Over 1,700 distinct characters can be entered and over 230 distinct accents that can be added to any character, in virtually any combination. Write in Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew or Arabic and mix languages in the same document or even on the same line. You can select a right-to-left orientation so that Hebrew and Arabic text will begin at the right margin. Or you can integrate Hebrew and Arabic in a document with a primary left-to-right orientation. In either case, Hebrew and Arabic characters will be entered from right to left and words will wrap properly from line to line. Accents, breathing marks, vowels, and cantillations (depending on the alphabet) are entered easily with pop-up dialogs and/or simple key combinations. In addition, full character contextualization (sigma in Greek, final forms in Hebrew, and stand-alone, initial, medial, and final forms in Hebrew) is handled automatically.
Optional modules extend support for biblical scholars and classicists to Akkadian, Ugaritic, Syriac, and Coptic.
Lingua allows you to work in different languages in a way that would not be possible with mere font changes. In addition to full right-to-left functionality in Hebrew and Arabic, you will find that vowels and accents are positioned much more accurately. The program will automatically take into account the height or width of a character in placing a vowel or accent. For letters that vary depending on their position in a word (e.g., the Greek sigma), Lingua will automatically select the correct form. You can also search, sort, change case and perform other linguistic fuctions. Use Lingua to produce superb camera-ready copy or export to other programs using our RTF filter with Unicode encoding.
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Full “language” system—not just font changes (codes in file indicate language or alphabet changes, not switching to a different font)
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Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic, and extended Roman alphabets (including IPA) included in standard release
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Optional modules extend support to Akkadian, Ugaritic, Syriac, and Coptic
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Instantly switch between alphabets/languages with a simple keystroke
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Display or suppress language-change icons
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Pop-up compose key (context-specific to alphabet) lets you enter diacritics, accents, modifiers, vowels, etc. above or below any character
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Stack as many diacritics as desired above or below any character
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Support for Hebrew cantillations and Arabic Koranic marks
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Multiple foreign keyboards available for easy entry of characters (mnemonic or national editions)
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View active keyboard layout in pop-up window as you type
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WYSIWYG display allows you to see actual character size, font and mode onscreen
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Print characters in any size from 4 to 250 point with any Windows-capable printer
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Use classical, modern or monospaced fonts (any Windows font that contains proper multilingual characters)
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Never worry about selecting correct accent based on width of character (as in font-based systems)—Lingua automatically positions accent on character
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Extremely sophisticated font-rendering table enables more accurate placement of marks than even in dedicated typesetting systems
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Sophisticated auto-positioning in Hebrew when vowels & cantillations are combined (post- and pre-positives are automatically positioned to avoid conflict with holems and sin/shin dots; vowels under qoph are automatically moved over to the right to make room for cantillation mark to their left)
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Other rendering options let you control positioning of doubled post- and pre-positives (when on non-final/non-initial character in word), as well as automatically handling of furtive patahs
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Option to display/hide Hebrew vowels and cantillations
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Can select at print time to render file differently (without changing file)—for example, select whether Greek circumflex is rounded or “tilde”-like form, or whether to use font/glyph style of ancient manuscripts (as in BHS) or of modern printed editions
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Fully supports right-to-left directionality of text in Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, Hebrew, and Syriac
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Mix and match languages of different directionality on the same line
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Can easily insert characters at places where languages with different directionality meet
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Choose between left-to-right and right-to-left orientation for document, or on paragraph-by-paragraph basis
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Arabic justification automatically inserts tatweel character
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Full automatic contextualization, with auto-selection of proper form (regular, stand-alone, initial, medial, or final)
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Ability to override automatic contextualization
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Support for conjectural characters (under and over dots and rings)
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Multilingual case conversion
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Multilingual entry, sorting and searching in the word processor, Orbis and Ibidem
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Import from bible research programs (Gramcord, Responsa Project, BibleWorks, Bible Windows with TLG, Logos Research)
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RTF export filter enhancements to export multilingual text to other formats (Unicode encoding and Linguist’s Software fonts are supported)
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Click on a thumbnail below to see a full screen shot.
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To switch languages while typing, just press
a simple key combination, like Shift+Ctrl+H for Hebrew. Hebrew
characters are always inserted correctly, with proper right-to-left
orientation and word wrap. Choose from a classic or contemporary
Hebew font. |
Pressing Shift+Ctrl+K while you are writing
will display a pop-up keyboard diagram showing the characters
for the current language in which you are writing. In the Hebrew
diagram, "Smart Form" characters are displayed in red.
These characters have varying forms that depend on the character's
position within a word -- Lingua automatically inserts the correct
character form within your document based on the character's
position! |
Entering accented letters in Nota Bene
is a snap! Type the base character, then press F6. A pop-up chart
will display the options in the active alphabet. Or, you can
immediately enter a key combination for the accent without waiting
for the chart. For example to add an acute accent, press F6,
then a (a for acute). |
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