Unicode Fonts

Unicode fonts use a standard system which has enough room to assign a specific position to each character in each language. Unlike the older ASCII fonts, there is no need to put the Greek alpha or the Hebrew aleph instead of "a" or "A," rather each character has its own fixed position. This lets you use the special characters from different languages in papers, emails, web pages, etc., without worrying whether or not the reader on a different platform or program has access to a specific font.

Unicode is supported on Mac OSClosed Operating System X and above.

Fonts for Unicode are widely available, and many are free. Some "large" fonts like Cardo and Lucida Grande include most of the characters you are likely to need. Others like True Athena, SBL Greek, SBL Hebrew and SIL Ezra just contain a specific set for one language. However, if a character is missing from the chosen font, it will be substituted from another font so the text is still readable.

The "Accordance" font, installed with Accordance 11.2 and above, is recommended for Unicode exportClosed to convert a file to another format for use in another application.. It includes Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, Arabic, Coptic, Cyrillic, transliteration and manuscript symbols, as well as many other languages.

Accordance does not use Unicode fonts for Biblical languages, signs, and symbols. Only Bibles that require special characters display the text in Unicode.

Accordance does allow you to export Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, and transliteration as Unicode. This means that the characters are remapped to the correct Unicode characters. The special Gothic characters in the MSS font do not have Unicode equivalents and so are converted to English characters. This feature is supported for copy and paste (and drag and drop) as well as Save as Text File.

  1. Navigate to the Export area of the Preferences dialog box.

    On the Application menu, choose Preferences, or press +,.

  2. Select Export all characters with Unicode format to convert the text to Unicode.
  3. If working in Greek or Hebrew, you can remove the accents, breathing marks, and special characters if your word processor and chosen font do not display them correctly. To do so:
  4. For Greek, select Strip accents and breathing marks.
  5. For Hebrew, select one of the items from the Strip characters pop-up menu.
  6. Save your changes and close the Preferences dialog box.

  7. Select and copy (+C) the Hebrew or Greek content to be exported to Unicode.

    You can also select the desired content, then on the File menu, choose Save Text Selection>RTF and save it directly to an RTF file in Unicode.

  8. Switch to your word processing program and paste the copied text. The desired Text is pasted into your program, based on your settings in the Export area of the Preferences dialog box.

Note

You can override the font and style setting for the following original language Texts: Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, and Coptic/Uncial. This is set via the Unicode Display area of the Preferences dialog box (listed in the Related Topics, below).

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On Mac OS X we recommend the Mellel word processor for Hebrew and many other languages. In general you will need to select the font, and set the text direction and justification for mainly Hebrew text, but all the characters in mixed text should be correct. Each program is responsible for adjusting the spaces between the characters, and they tend to appear different in each font.

The converted text can be used in any word processor that supports Unicode including TextEdit on Mac OS X, Mellel, Nisus, and Word for Windows 2000 and above.

Word for Mac 2004/2008/2011 does not fully support right-to-left, and does not allow editing of the text. Word for Mac 2016 now supports right-to-left, and is recommended for use with Accordance. You can paste Hebrew Unicode into Word 2004 as follows:

  1. Select a Unicode font such as Accordance, Cardo or Lucida Grande.
  2. On the Edit menu, select Paste Special>Unformatted Text (not Styled Text).

To enter the characters from another language when typing in OS X:

  1. Open System Preferences>Keyboard>Input Sources.
  2. Select the Character palette and/or Keyboard viewer as desired and the languages you want to enter.
  3. Check Show input menu in menu bar.
  4. Select the language from the Input menu (flag) in the top right of the screen when a Unicode application is activeClosed The application, window, tab, or other screen element which is currently being used; sometimes called the "front" or "frontmost" screen element.
  5. Type or select the desired character from the palette or keyboard viewer.

When Unicode characters which are supported in Accordance fonts (Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, and Rosetta transliteration) are imported into Accordance, the characters are converted to the appropriate Accordance font and characters. This applies to copy and paste and drag and drop as well as to the import of HTML documents as User Tools.

However, when text with Accordance fonts is copied back into Accordance from an application which supports Unicode, some of the characters may not be found. Press Opt+ to override this and paste as ASCII text.

Copy As Transliteration converts the text to a transliteration. If the Preferences are set to export to Unicode, this lets you convert Greek and Hebrew to Unicode Transliteration. To use this feature:

  1. In the Export area of the Preferences dialog box, verify that Export all characters with Unicode format is selected.
  2. Select the desired original language Text.
  3. Right-click and choose Copy as>Transliteration.
  4. Switch to the desired program and paste in the copied text. The transliterated Text is pasted into the document.

If desired, you can export to Transliteration without using Unicode. In this case, note that the Accordance fonts must be available to the word processor. If necessary use the FontFixer Utility to add Accordance fonts to your Mac, then proceed as follows:

  1. In the Export area of the Preferences dialog box, do the following:
  2. De-select Export all characters with Unicode format.
  3. For Greek and Hebrew, choose one of the following from the Export characters as pop-up menu:
  4. Transliteration:  The exported transliteration will use the Rosetta font.
  5. English: The exported transliteration will use an English font without special characters.
  6. Select the text that you want to export as a Transliteration.

  7. On the File menu, choose Save Text Selection>RTF. You are prompted to enter a file name and location.

    When you open the RTF file, the transliterated Text is displayed based on the settings you entered in the Export area of the Preferences dialog box.