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New Technology in Version 2.0 Nitartha-Sambhota has been redesigned
for version 2.0 to provide the leading Tibetan word processing system available today. New features include:
- high quality typography through the creation of new fonts specially calligraphed and designed by Tibetan font designers;
- much increased compatibility of Nitartha-Sambhota with desktop publishing programs;
- enhanced capabilities to transparently publish Tibetan-language documents to the World Wide Web
- add-on's to increase the input method to permit Wylie input as well as the specialized Nitartha-Sambhota keyboard
 The new fonts have been created by a breakthough font design team composed of Tibetans trained in traditional font
calligraphy, experts in Asian-language font creation and Western developers trained in the most recent font creation tools. To implement the font designs, we have trained Tibetan scholars in digital font
creation programs. The result has been the the creation of what we believe will be considered the most beautiful digital Tibetan-language fonts available. To create unparalleled precision in typographic rendering, we have carefully designed and added
over six hundred new Tibetan-Sanskrit character stacks to the Nitartha-Sambhota fonts in Version 2 of Nitartha-Sambhota. These stacks conform to
Sanskrit-Tibetan dictionary rules. The program has also been updated to provide the following new and enhanced capabilities:
- Nitartha-Sambhota 2.0 documents can now be
transparently imported into virtually any word-processing or desktop
publishing program without any display problem or limitation on functionality. Most Tibetan language programs cannot create compatible documents because of limitations on the font encoding.
With the Options Pack, you can input using a Wylie keyboard
, spell check your documents, and transparently convert to Sambhota from ACIP, L-Sambhota, Wylie text and a variety of other formats
Tibetan-language documents can now be more easily displayed on the web. A wider number of browsers, including Netscape, will correctly display Tibetan text that has
been typed in Word. Other browsers, such as Internet Explorer, will be able to display a wider range of characters. We know of no other program that can produce web-readable documents.
Nitartha-Sambhota 2.0 ends the compatibility/conversion problems that plague Tibetan language documents used in different programs on the PC, and when exchanging documents between the Macintosh and the PC.
Many of these features have been engineered through an extensive re-encoding of the fonts.
Documents entered with the earlier encoding will be incompatible with those using the new re-encoding, but a conversion program will be made available that can convert documents using the old
encoding to documents using the new encoding. The new program also ends many bugs that plague other Tibetan input systems: Tibetan text can be cut/copied and pasted between
Windows applications and will not be converted owing to "smart quotes"; line spacing is more uniform since unusually large character stacks and vowels which are far from the baseline are placed in a
separate font; the Microsoft Word 8 line-return bug is vanquished and Tibetan words break properly at syllables. We are currently in the process of creating new Tibetan u-chen fonts,
and also plan to create an u-med font. Purchase information for Nitartha-Sambhota Tibetan Language Tookit (online dictionary, web Tibetan tutorials, downloads and more) |
