The files in this directory contain various versions of the
diacritic fonts designed by Professor K. R. Norman (University of
Cambridge) for Romanised text in Indian languages.

Macintosh versions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The file NORM.SEA.HQX contains the final versions of Professor
Norman's fonts as developed by him for Macintosh users. Included are
Postscript, Truetype and bitmapped (screen) versions of the two
fonts: Normyn (Times Roman) and MyTymes (Times Italic). If anyone is
still using the earlier Norman and MyTimes fonts, these supersede
those.

The package consists of a binhexed file (.HQX) which can be decoded using
Binhex4.0 or a shareware file (de)compression program such as Stuffit or
Compact Pro. This will create a file named NORM.SEA which is a self
expanding archive. Just click on this to create a folder containing the
fonts. (Some Internet programs may carry out the binhex decoding
automatically, when you download the file.)

PC versions
~~~~~~~~~~~

The remaining files contain PC-compatible versions of Professor
Norman's fonts. The two principal fonts are "Normyn", which is based
on Times Roman, and "MyTymes", which is based on Times Italic.
"Norman" is an older version of "Normyn", and is included because it
contains certain characters that are no longer available in
"Normyn". (The odd names result from the way in which the fonts
developed over time: I have retained them for compatibility with the
Macintosh versions).

A problem emerged in using these fonts (or others retaining a
Macintosh-based encoding) with Microsoft Word for Windows, which
uses character 160 (decimal) for a non-breaking space and will not
allow it to be redefined: this slot is unfortunately used in Prof.
Norman's fonts for the character retroflex t. (Word for Windows also
seems unwilling to allow access to the characters in slots numbered
lower than 32, but these are less likely to be of concern to
Indologists.) I have looked for elegant solutions to the problem --
such as persuading Microsoft to adhere to their own standards -- but
without success. I have therefore modified the fonts by copying
character 160 to the vacant slot 202 (vacant because it represents
non-breaking space in the original Macintosh encoding).

The files with a ".pfb" extension are Type 1 PostScript versions of
the fonts, the ".ttf" files the TrueType equivalents; files ending
in ".pfm" are font metric files.

The files "Norman_layout.ps" and "Normyn_layout.ps" are PostScript
files which can be printed out to show what characters are available
and in what positions. In order to make the fonts genuinely useful
in the Windows environment it would be necessary to map the
characters to key-sequences. Neither Professor Norman nor I can do
this, as we do not use Windows (he uses a Macintosh, I use Unix). If
anyone develops a suitable system, copies of the relevant files
would be appreciated so that they can be placed on this server along
with the fonts themselves.

Please email problems to jds10@cam.ac.uk unless they are
Macintosh-specific, in which case email mhcrxlc@dir.mcc.ac.uk.

John D. Smith
December 12, 1995



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