[tise-devel] Getting line breaking in Word

["David Germano" <dfg9w@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

With help from Bob Chilton, here is how to get line breaking in Word


To get Word to break lines correctly without breaking Tibetan syllables, you
need to change the settings.  Tools -> Options ->  Compatibility.  Then
under Options, Scroll down the options and make sure to check "Use line
breaking rules".   Click the "Default" to make this setting apply to all new
documents.  Then hit OK, and this enables line wrapping at the Tibetan Tsek 
To get proper full justification of Tibetan text, set Format: Paragraph:
Indents and Spacing to "Distributed" alignment.  However, to do this, you
must have first installed Word or Office 2003 including Office Tools.  That
provides the enhance version of Uniscribe which supports Unicode Tibetan.
Then  from the Start menu, run Microsoft Office -> Microsoft Office Tools ->
Microsoft Office 2003 Language Settings.  Add as "enabled languages"  at
least one complex script language (such as Hindi or Kannada or Arabic, etc)
and at least one East Asian script language (such as Chinese).  This might
require access to files contained on the Office 2003 CD-ROM.
Open Word and choose Tools -> Options -> Compatibility to make sure that the
box labeled "Use line breaking rules" is checked. 
There is a small bug in "distributed" format in that the final line of a
distributed paragraph is sometimes stretched and centered (ugly).  There is
a workaround:  when you have finalized your textflow and are ready to
print/publish, place a hard return (paragraph break) at the end of the last
*full* line of the section of text and then apply "align left" to just the
final (partial) line of text -- which is now seen by Word as a separate
paragraph.]
A related issue is Word in its service pack one (SP1) version now "knows"
not to allow a Tibetan shad in the first character position when line
wrapping.  Of course you can always start a new line (=new paragraph) with a
SHAD -- the above behavior applies only to dynamic line breaks. This is a
SP1 fix that is not in the original Word / Office 2003 release.
According to the developers at Microsoft (Office division), the
line-breaking behaviors filter down from Word to the various other Office
applications.  Thus the next version of Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Internet
Explorer, etc will "know" how to properly line-break Tibetan text.   In the
meantime, Excel 2003 does not recognize Tibetan Tsek as a line break
opportunity.  Therefore cells containing multi-line Tibetan text must be
formatted manually for line breaking, etc.  Turn on "Wrap text"  under Text
contorl on the Alignment tab of Format Cells.  Use a space (not a hard
return or new line) to give a line break opportunity.   [Later, when Excel
supports normal Tibetan line-breaking you can simply replace Tsek+space with
Tsek in your worksheets.]  In many cases for Tibetan text you will want to
use the "Center" option for Vertical:  under Text alignment (also on the
Alignment tab of Format Cells).