too much space between only some words in doc--how to fix?

[Rebecca]

I have a long document with combined
Hindi (Mangal, 12 pt) and English
(TNR, 12 pt) text, split mainly up
into columns. Now that I have
finished typing the document (of
course), I realize that the spacing
between the Mangal words is much
larger than the spacing between the
English words, which looks normal.

Looking at the formatting marks, the
normal spaces are marked with the
regular dot about halfway up between
each word. However, the spaces
between the Hindi words are marked
with a dot more like a period, like
this.

That's not all--when I backspace
over one of these larger spaces
between the Hindi word and then
re-insert the space, it comes back
in normal, with the slightly raised,
normal dot and looks normal too.

Any ideas as to why this is
happening? Is there one setting I
can change to fix this, or at least
an easy way to quickly fix this
without the tedium of backspacing
and re-entering the spaces in 90+
pages?

Thanks very much.
Rebecca Grapevine

PS-Not sure if this is a Hindi
specific problem; figured it could
happen in other kinds of fonts as
well....

 

[James Silverton]

Rebecca wrote on Mon, 29 Aug 2005 15:07:05 -0400:

R> Looking at the formatting marks, the
R> normal spaces are marked with the
R> regular dot about halfway up between
R> each word. However, the spaces
R> between the Hindi words are marked
R> with a dot more like a period, like
R> this.

R> Any ideas as to why this is
R> happening? Is there one setting I
R> can change to fix this, or at least
R> an easy way to quickly

I'm not sure what's going on since what you describe does not
seem to be any of the special characters with which I am
familiar but could you select the larger space, copy it into
Find/Replace and replace all with a normal space?

James Silverton.

 

[Rebecca]

James, Thanks for the reply. That
did in fact work. I did not
originally think of using find and
replace for the empty spaces! Thanks
again,
Rebecca

PS- Here's a reply I got on a MS
forum devoted to Indic languages in
Office/Windows environment, if you
are interested:
appears that the two spaces are the
same Unicode code point (i.e.
u0020). The difference is in what
"Language" Word thinks they are
[select one of them and look in the
status bar and you'll see what
Language Word thinks it is]

The space between the "Latin" words
is in the default system language
(probably, "English (US)" and the
space between the Hindi words is in
the 'Hindi' Language.

And though the two spaces probably
have the same code point, they may
or may not behave differently.
Probably, Word (i.e. Uniscribe)
makes the Hindi space wider...

When you backspace and replace the
spaces in the Hindi column, if you
don't have the Hindi IME enabled,
then it will insert an "English
(US)" space in its place.

One way to do this change globally
is using Find/Replace with the
following settings:

Find Text: " " (i.e. the space)

Click 'More' and then 'Format',
'Language', 'Hindi'

Replace with text: " " (same thing)

'Format', 'Language', and 'English (US)'

This should replace all Hindi
spaces with English ones (if that's
really what you want to do).



P.S. If you search the website
http://scripts.sil.org/ (it appears
to be offline at the moment or I
would give you an exact reference) I
think there's a Word document
template which has useful Unicode
utilities for telling what the
Unicode value of a particular
character is (that's how come I know
that both spaces are u0020) and/or
inserting arbitrary Unicode code
points based on their number (i.e.
0020 for the space).



The Doc template is called
"UnicodeWordMacros".<<<

 

[James Silverton]

Rebecca wrote on Tue, 30 Aug 2005 14:27:23 -0400:

R> PS- Here's a reply I got on a MS
R> forum devoted to Indic languages in
R> Office/Windows environment, if you
R> are interested:

I'm glad my suggestion worked! I've never had to deal with Indic
languages so the reply was rather interesting but hopefully,
unneeded

James Silverton.