History bibliographies

[Prof Peter Kornicki]

Dear all

I have recently updated my history bibliographies and they can be downloaded from Knowledge Commons.

Bibliography of Japanese History, Part 1 (covers up to 1600)

https://works.hcommons.org/records/15v4b-ctd12

Bibliography of Japanese History, Part 2 (covers 1600 to 1912)

https://works.hcommons.org/records/4ntve-e5g49

I apologise for any omissions or errors: please let me know if you find some.

Peter Kornicki

[Richard Bowring]

Dear Colleagues.
This a Mac question but certainly a PMJS question too. I want to input some siddham syllables into a Word file. There is a rudimentary set of syllables in the Mac system itself and I have found the Noto Sans Siddham font on the web, but Word does not seem to like it. Has anyone any experience of this? Do I need special software?
Richard Bowring

[Dan Sherer]

Hello Prof. Bowring,

Siddham text appears to be in Unicode.

In word, set your font to "San Serif Collection," then for a given letter type the appropriate code (i.e. 11582 for 𑖂). Then select the code and hit ALT+X. The character will appear.

A similar method can be used for typing kaeriten, which occupy their own unicode block.

It's not the most elegant way to type but it will work.

Hope that helps,

Dan Sherer

[Leonardo Wolfe]

Dear Professor Bowring,

​Unfortunately, I don't use macOS but, in theory, you should be able to install the Noto Sans Siddham .ttf file to Font Book, restart Word, and go from there, but it's difficult to diagnose without knowing the exact issue.

Alternatively, the below may be of some use:

​https://www.aksharamukha.com/converter

— You can create images to insert into the document, ensuring cross-compatibility. This is perhaps the best option without an embedded font. Incidentally, the glyphs on https://unicode.org/charts/nameslist/n_11580.html don't even render on my Android device.

​https://github.com/MihailJP/Muktamsiddham

— The above requires some technical knowledge (see "INSTALL"), but you may be able to email the developer.

​Kind regards,
​Leonardo Wolfe

[Leonardo Wolfe]

Dear Professor Bowring,

Dr. Sherer's reply has been posted since my initial reply, and so hopefully the issue is resolved, however, I should have mentioned that with the first alternative option, you may want to size the text exactly how you want it before exporting an image. Because the exported files are .png raster images (made of fixed pixels), if you try to enlarge them later in Word, they will become blurry. Whilst vector formats (like SVG) would solve this, that gets a bit more technical and isn't an option on that website.

My intuition is that the font issue itself lies with Word rather than macOS. Word uses a proprietary text layout engine that can struggle with complex scripts. Consequently, you may have better luck using a different word processor, e.g., Apple's native Pages app or LibreOffice.

Kind regards,
Leonardo Wolfe

P.S. I'm currently reading your book, The Religious Traditions of Japan: 500—1600, after recently visiting the University Press bookshop. It's very insightful!

[Iyanaga Nobumi]

Dear Prof. Bowring,

There is a site <https://mandaraji.xsrv.jp/tools/> in which you can find a page listing siddham fonts that may work in your system (there are links to them; even if the link does not work, you can search the font name.), a page that allows to convert Roman transliterations to siddham font glyphs, etc.

All the pages are written in Japanese, and perhaps not very easy to use, but I hope it will be of some help for you. I must say that I have almost never tried siddham fonts in vertical writing ; it seems they are difficult to use in the vertical mode.

Best regards,

Nobumi Iyanaga

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