IN DESIGN AND SERBIAN LANGUAGE
How to get to our variants of cursive letters г, д, п and т in Adobe CS programs?
The article Use of Serbian Cyrillic alphabet on computers by Vedran Erakovic from 2006 explained why our cursive letters variants could not be found in the Cyrillic code page, and offers the solution to the problem by switching to Unicode and Open Type format provided with space for all the alternatives, including our forms of cursive letters, the so-called zones for private use.
Nowadays, multilingual fonts comprising Cyrillic alphabet are more widespread, and the existence of our cursive letters in them is becoming increasingly common. Such fonts often carry the suffix "Pro" and, besides the alternatives for Serbian Cyrillic, there are other alternatives, such as those used in Bulgaria.
There is still no universal solution for the way that leads to these alternatives in a variety of applications in which the text is layed out using fonts found in the computer system.
Access to alternative characters in Open Type programming is solved by using features. To replace the letters from the default script and the language to another script or the language the feature localization (locl) is used. This function replaces letters from the basic code page by the alternatives of another language, the way it is programmed in the font. For example, when in the text layout program, on the selected text, the Serbian language is chosen, the Serbian variants of cursive letters г, д, п and т appear instead of the default glyphs (used in the Russian language).
To enable this, there are two prerequisites: the first is existence of the Serbian language in a drop-down menu of the program, and the other is that program recognizes the localization OT feature.
In Adobe CS programs as a rule, there is no support for the Serbian language (for many other languages as well), so the question is how to use the locale, which is built into the font.
For Adobe In Design two solutions are offered to activate localization for Serbian language in Windows and MacOS operating systems.
The first solution is universal and provided for different versions of CS package. It works by opening a file with the extension .inx set for a specific language that initiates the emergence of the language in the menu. To enable the language to appeare in other document, it is sufficient to rewrite the frame that appears when opening .inx file. This method provides only the availability of the local letter variants, but not the hyphenation or access to the dictionary.
Serbian_Cyrillic.zip
(unpack the file to get Serbian_Cyrillic.inx)
Another method is adding Hunspell Dictionary files which enables localization, hyphenation and access to the dictionary. This is applicable starting with version CS5.5, while older packages do not have that option.
It is necessary to unpack the attached file Srpski_jezik_za_CS.zip. Then overwrite folders with dictionaries which location is given in instructions and edit the file Info.plist, also located according to instructions, which activates the dictionaries. To edit the file Info.plist it is necessary to be logged in as an Administrator, and InDesign should be closed.
Instructions:
- Folders sr_Cyrl i sr_Latn store in folder Dictionaries
- Info.plist file store in the folder AdobeHunspellPlugin, or AdobeHunspellPlugin.bundle/Contents, depending on the operating system.
(Existing file Info.plist delete or rename) - Start InDesign. In the list of languages Serbian (Latin) and Serbian (Cyrillic) should appear.
Location of Dictionaries folder
Literatura:
How to enable more languages in InDesign CS5.5, Miguel Sousa
InDesign Help: Add or remove Hunspell dictionaries | CC, CS6
