Lingua Overview

Lingua is an add-on module that provides support for Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Cyrillic, the International Phonetic Alphabet, characters used in transliteration, characters used in African languages and other specialized characters. Full multilingual word processing including right-to-left word wrap in Hebrew and Arabic is supported.

If you have not already purchased Lingua, you can go to www.notabene.com and log in. This will take you to a secure order form that can be used to purchase upgrades and add-on modules. If you are using an older version of the program, you will need to upgrade to the current version when you purchase Lingua. When you place your order, your credit card will be charged and you will receive a new product key that gives access to all of the Lingua functionality. The new product key can be entered by clicking Help, Activate Add-On Modules. Or if you use the new product key when you install, Lingua will be activated automatically.

With Lingua, it is easy to change from one language to another and languages can be mixed in the same document, even on the same line. The program allows you to type letters and then add diacritical marks, accents, Hebrew vowels or Greek breathing marks. A simple pop-up diagram facilitates the entry of accents, but once you know the key combinations, the accents can be entered directly.

We recommend that you read through each page of this Lingua section of Nota Bene Help. In particular, it is important to understand how Nota Bene uses alphabets, languages and keyboards in a system that provides much more functionality than merely switching to a different font. See Alphabets, Languages and Keyboards. Also, there are some important issues involved in mixing a right-to-left language such as Hebrew or Arabic with a left-to-right language such as English. Spaces must be entered in the primary language and you should understand the difference between selecting Hebrew or Arabic and selecting right-to-left orientation. If you use Hebrew in your writing, please read Lingua: Hebrew carefully.

Lingua provides you with many ways of entering letters in non-Roman alphabets and other special characters. You can switch to a Hebrew, Greek, Arabic or Cyrillic keyboard by pressing Ctrl+Shift+H or Ctrl+Shift+G or Ctrl+Shift+A or Ctrl+Shift+C and then use the keyboard to type in one of those alphabets. Ctrl+Shift+K will give you a diagram of the active keyboard and Ctrl+Shift+R will take you back to the Roman alphabet. The F6 key (the "compose" key) can be used to add virtually any accent or diacritical mark. F6 can also be used to enter alternate forms of a letter or other character (for example, changing a b to a beta, a hooktop b or a small cap b or changing a dollar sign to any other monetary symbol). See Compose Key (F6). Finally, a complete inventory of all of the characters that can be entered is available by pressing Alt+Shift+F5 (or click Insert, Characters from Inventory). These characters can be inserted directly from the inventory dialog, or they can be assigned to a key. Once assigned, the character can be entered by pressing Alt+F5 and then the assigned key. Similarly, characters (even sets of characters) can be composed by adding any diacritical marks and/or by changing the orientation of the character (e.g., rotated, small cap or superscript) and then assigned to a key. See Lingua Character Inventory.

On most systems, Lingua can be used with no special setup. However, if you find that Hebrew letters are not being displayed properly (e.g., if they are not always in the right order), please see Lingua Setup.