Difference between revisions of "How to prepare InDesign CS5, CS6 for Tibetan script"

Revision as of 13:01, 28 October 2010

Introduction

InDesign CS5 for Mac OS-X supports a new composer called "World-Ready Composer". This composer correctly renders Tibetan Unicode fonts that work with Windows or Linux.

Installation

A script or a template needs to be installed in order to make the "World-Ready composer" accessible.

A very good overview and scripts for enabling Tibetan in Indesign CS4/CS5 is given by Thomas Phinney. The page also contains templates for Indesign, Illustrator and Photoshop.

Script coding

The minimal requirement to enable Tibetan rendering is a macro that enables the World-Ready composer in one paragraph style by:

var paragraphStyle = doc.paragraphStyles.item (<somestylename>); 
paragraphStyle.composer = "Adobe World-Ready Paragraph Composer";

A complete script that creates a paragraph-style for the Tibetan font Jomolhari would look like this:

Tibetan.jsx:

createTibetanParagraphStyle (app.activeDocument, 'Tibetan');  
function createTibetanParagraphStyle (doc, stylename)  
  {  
  if (doc.paragraphStyles.item (stylename) == null)  
     doc.paragraphStyles.add ({name: stylename});  
  var paragraphStyle = doc.paragraphStyles.item (stylename);  
  paragraphStyle.composer = "Adobe World-Ready Paragraph Composer";  
  try {
      tibFont = app.fonts.item("Jomolhari");
      paragraphStyle.appliedFont = tibFont;
      }
  catch (myError) {};
  } 

This script should be saved into a file Tibetan.jsx and copied to

• Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data \Adobe\InDesign\Version 7.0\<locale>\Scripts\Scripts Panel
• Windows Vista: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming \Adobe\InDesign\Version 7.0\<locale>\Scripts\Scripts Panel
• Mac OS: /Users/<username>/Library/Preferences /Adobe InDesign/Version 7.0/<locale>/Scripts/Scripts Panel

where <username> is your user name and <locale> references your location and language, for example, en_US.

Once the script is in the folder, it appears on the Scripts panel inside InDesign. To display the panel, choose Window > Utilities > Scripts. ^[1]

Double-click the script to create a paragraph style "Tibetan".

Once a single style that uses the world-ready composer is defined, InDesign exposes the world-ready composer as option for all existing and new styles.

Configuration

[1] Indesign CS5 includes a World-Ready composer that supports Tibetan.

Once you have installed a script as described above, you can enable the World-Ready Composer for different paragraph styles:

• Either define a new paragraph style, or edit an existing style (e.g. [Basic Paragraph])
• Then set "Paragraph Style Options / Justification / Composer" to "Adobe World-Ready Paragraph Composer". (See image [1]).

Any paragraph that has such a style assigned, correctly renders Tibetan Unicode.

The new composer supports all Windows/Linux Unicode Tibetan Fonts.

Compatibility

The World-ready composer was introduced with Adobe Indesign CS4, and enhanced in CS5.

Versions of Adobe Indesign CS3 and older do not support the World-Ready Composer and require external plug-ins for Tibetan support.

Notes

The techniques discussed here should also work with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop.

References

1. ↑ See Indesign CS5 Scripting Tutorial, p.6

Internal Links

• Unicode Tibetan Fonts
• How to edit Tibetan texts
• Tibetan Input Method for Windows
• Configuring OpenOffice for Tibetan script
• Preparing Computers for Tibetan Editing
• How to edit Tibetan texts - This article explains the basic setup to be able to work with Tibetan texts in Office (OpenOffice or Microsoft)
• Configuring OpenOffice for Tibetan script.

External Links

• A discussion of Tibetan support in various versions of Indesign at Adobe forums.
• Scripts for enabling Tibetan in Indesign CS4 by Thomas Phinney.
• Adobe Indesign CS5 scripting tutorials