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Date:         Wed, 11 Nov 92 22:06:00 EDT
From:         Frank Stewart <STEWART@ANNENRES.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: spellers and separator tables
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.notabene

People have been asking about changing font pools.  Here are some notes I
wrote for myself, which may (or may not) be of some use.  I changed one of
the font pools (Transliterated Languages) extensively in order to be able
to write colloquial Arabic in transcription.  I then assigned all the lower
case letters with diacriticals to the CTRL keyboard and the upper-case ones
to CTRL + SHIFT, as I had on SLS.  Seems to work fine.
        One problem I had--solutions welcome: I'd like to be able to have
on the screen, and print, a lower case letter b with a dot under it.  Can
this be done?
Frank Stewart, Annenberg Institute, Philadelphia
        STEWART@ANNENRES.  Tel. (215) 238-1290 x 146

In what follows, basic terminology etc. from the "Lingua Quick Start Card,"
the part headed "Screen Fonts: Overview" and "Screen Fonts: Swapping."
A symbol pool is a collection of 512 symbols.  There are sixteen such pools,
numbered 1 through 9 and A through G.  Of these, the first twelve are given
names by NB4.  I'm not clear what the purpose is of the remaining four pools.
The first thing is to make sure that all the symbols you want to use are in
the primary symbol pools.  With VGA there are four such pools.  One of these
four is the default pool, i.e., it is the one that is loaded when you enter
NB4.  (But as far as I can tell it doesn't matter which is the default pool,
since VGA will swap instantaneously between the four primary pools.)
My primary pools are:
1.      Transliterated Languages
2.      Transliterated Mid E and Hebrew
3.      Complete Eur. and Cyrillic
4.      NB Base and Maths

Building a new pool. F1--Edit--Alphabet--Build.  You now get a table headed
"EGA/VGA Font Subsets. [ > Active Fonts (1st is primary)]".  This heading
(I was told by Steve of NB) uses obsolete terminology.
        Font subset = pool
        Active fonts = primary pools
        Primary font = default pool.
So it should read "EGA/VGA Pools. [ > Primary pools (1st is default)]".
A.
If you put the bar on the name of a given pool (subset) and press ENTER you
see a 32 by 16 character table (here called a set).  These are the characters
in that pool.  If you press F10 you go back to the list of pools.
When the 32 by 16 character table is on the screen, you can press F1 and get
a 32 by 8 table called a character inventory.  There are eleven such
inventories, in order:
NB Base
Multilingual 1
Multilingual 2
Math and Symbols
Phonetic
Hebrew
Vocalized Hebrew
Greek
Cyrillic
Extended Cyrillic
Options
PgUp and PgDn will move you through these eleven inventories.
F1 toggles you back and forth between an inventory and the pool, i.e., the
32 by 16 character table of a pool.
You can take a character from a character inventory and put it in a pool
(replacing an existing character in that pool).  To do this, you put the
cursor on the character you want from the character table; press ENTER, which
shifts you to the pool (i.e., the 32 by 16 table); then put the cursor on the
character in the pool that you want to replace; and then press ENTER again.
B.
If when you are viewing the list of names of pools you press F2, you get the
following menu:
        Activate current subset
        Make current subset primary
        Rearrange order of subsets
For the first two, you press ENTER and the pool on whose name the bar is
becomes the current pool or (as the case may be) the default pool.
For the third option, you press ENTER, and only then move the bar to the name
of the pool that you want to move to a different place on the list.  The
instructions for this are clear.
C.
        To end the session, press F10.  You get the menu:
        Continue customization
        Quit without saving
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU