How to get sanskrit symbols?

[Horgycat]

Hello all,

Anyone know if it is possible to write a word in sanskrit (I hope I have that right, it is an Asian Indian word "suttiah" meaning oculist) in Adobe In Design? The u has a little squiggle over it. I looked for that language in the ID character palette, but no go. I also tried importing it from Word (which does have it), but it turns into a little box instead of the character, I guess because ID does not support this language yet? Will I just have to try and match a graphic of the word to the rest of the sentence?

Thanks.

Pam

[j***@adobeforums.com]

The pink box appears when your current font does not have that character (in the Unicode sense).

If you can see the right character in Word, it must mean you have at least one font which can display Sanskrit. Apply this font on the box character in InDesign, and you should see the squiggly u.

It is not necessary to select another "language" to be able to insert special characters. The language is only used for spell check and for hyphenation, and you can happily insert Thai, Devanagari, or Chinese characters in any text -- provided you have the fonts to go. Check out Arial Unicode for loads and loads of interesting glyphs (although it does not seem to contain a Sanskrit section).

[K***@adobeforums.com]

Post by j***@adobeforums.com
Check
out Arial Unicode for loads and loads of interesting glyphs (although
it does not seem to contain a Sanskrit section).

But it does have all the glyphs necessary for Latin Sanskrit
transliteration: a, e, i, o, u macron; s accent acute; n tilde; m, n
overdot; d, h, k, l, m, n, r, s, t, z underdot.

The real Sanskrit alphabet is Devanagari (although there are some other
alphabets that can be used as well) which seems to be present in Arial
Unicode.

[K***@adobeforums.com]

This is Sanskrit transliteration. The u has a macron above it. All you
need is a font that either contains a u macron or contains a separate
macron combining character that you can kern back over the u. If you
have a lot of these, you'll want a font with a u macron, but if it's
just one or two, the font you're using probably already has the macron
combining character.

Easiest would be to use one of the more robust (but overused) fonts that
come with Windows, like Arial or Times New Roman, but if you want to try
to use the font you're using now, go to Windows Character Map and search
for "macron" and you should be able to copy and paste this character to
the right of a u. Then kern them together so that the macron sits
directly above the u.

[K***@adobeforums.com]

BTW, if you need the complete set of Sanskrit translit characters
(macrons, underdots, and overdots) you'll find them in fonts that have
"unicode" in their names (like Lucida Sans Unicode or Arial Unicode).

[Horgycat]

Thanks so much to both of you!! This forum is so great!! :)