Copying and Pasting Multilingual Text in FLEX/Texts & Words

[Sargon Hasso]

I copied a multilingual text, Syriac/Arabic with IPA, from Word into Flex's 'Texts & Words', but I am getting the Syriac text OK, but the Arabic text appears as squares. Needless to say, if I set the Arabic text manually with appropriate fonts, it works fine. My question, for a mixed text like this, how can I seamlessly copy a text and paste it in Flex without manually fixing the fonts issue?

Thanks,

Sargon 

[Beth-docs Bryson]

The crucial piece is not how the fonts are set, but the Writing Systems.

In the Texts & Words baseline, the strings are marked up for what language they are in, and it is based on that markup that the font is chosen.

Once it is in the Baseline, you can select various portions of text and use the combo box in the Toolbar to indicate what language it is.  (Presumably when you paste the first time, it would all come in marked as what ever language the Baseline is set to.)

I don’t have a clear answer on how to get pasted text to come in already marked up for what Writing System it is in.  I don’t know if the language markup is done in the same was as it is done in FLEx (my guess is that it is not), or if that markup is preserved in the copy/paste operation.  Ken Zook may be able to answer more specifically.

-Beth

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[Ken Zook]

As Beth mentioned, the only way you can assign a font in Flex is a writing system or a style within a writing system. Any time you need to specify a different writing system than the default for the current field, you should always use the writing system chooser in the toolbar to choose the desired writing system which will then use the font and keyboard specified for that writing system and style.

 

When cutting and pasting within Flex, the writing systems are copied from the source and pasted into the target. Embedded writing systems are maintained in this process. This only works for fields that allow embedding (definition, notes, example sentences, translations, interlinear baselines, etc.) If you cut and paste within Flex, and paste into a field that does not allow embedding (lexeme form, gloss, etc.), it may look like the embeddings remain after the paste, but when you stop and restart Flex, you’ll see that the text is really in the default writing system for the target field. You can tell if a field allows embedding by clicking in the field. If the writing system and style choosers are active, it means you can embed styles and writing systems.

 

When you paste from outside FLEx, the entire paste content will be inserted in whatever writing system is active in the writing system chooser at the time. There isn’t any way to paste text from outside Flex that contains embedded writing systems or styles. You can use various imports to include embedded writing systems and styles. For dictionaries, SFM and LIFT imports allow this.

 

For Interlinear text, you can use File…Import…Standard Format Interlinear, or FLEx Text Interlinear. These options import entire texts, but not portions within a text. Standard Format interlinear does not allow you to specify any embeddings. It is possible to import non-baseline writing systems into a baseline from FLEx Text, but read on.

 

Embedding different writing systems is allowed, but discouraged in interlinear baselines, and will probably not do what you want. Flex is designed to have one vernacular writing system for an entire baseline. This baseline text is broken into Wordforms and Punctuationforms. Vernacular words are treated as wordforms with the specified writing system for the Form, and allow interlinearization. Any other writing systems will be treated as Punctuation and cannot be interlinearized. You can interlinearize in more than one vernacular writing system, but there are various complexities involved in this. See section 13 of https://downloads.languagetechnology.org/fieldworks/Documentation/Flex_tips.pdf for details on this.

 

Whenever you see squares in a FLEx display, it indicates that the code points do not have glyphs in the specified Font. If you paste Chinese characters from an external source in an English definition, it will show as boxes because Charis SIL and most other fonts designed for English do not have glyphs for Chinese code points. If you highlight the square boxes and choose Chinese in the writing system chooser, and Chinese is set up properly, then you are embedding a Chinese writing system within an English string, and FLEx knows how to properly display Chinese characters in that writing system.

 

Ken

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[Andreas_Joswig]

Hi Sargon,

As far as I know, you can't. You'll want to try to keep all text according to the same writing system, for various practical reasons. You can only analyze or parse text when it is shown in the same writing system. So, when you cannot avoid having it in two writing systems, you'll need to apply the formatting manually.

FLEx only gives you one baseline, so you can also not have the same text according to two different baselines. The only way to show words in two writing systems is to give the wordform in two writing systems in the gloss view or in the analysis view. But this is also a very time-consuming process.

Andreas

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Andreas Joswig, PhD

Senior Linguistics Consultant

Hambühren, Germany / Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

+49 1512 3581686 (Ger) or +251 910 497594 (Eth)