Tibetan Language Kit for OS X Help

What’s New in the Tibetan Language Kit for OS X

Version 2.0

This version incorporates an enhanced version of our initial font with expanded support for additional Sanskrit stacks. Users who purchase the Tibetan Language Kit will automatically receive only the new version of this font. Because some of the changes to this font will cause Tibetan documents created with our earlier version to reflow, users of the older version may want to continue using the old font alongside this new version. For this reason, we've modified the name slightly to allow both fonts to be present in the same system. The new font will appear in font menus as XenoType Tibetan New.

Beginning with this version, the formats of some of the files included with the kit have changed.

Although the font format hasn't actually changed, we're now using a specific structure for the font tables and the extension .ttf. This structure allows us to eventually support Windows and OS X in the same font file. In this particular instance, you can keep the old font as well as the new one with the .ttf extension.

This version also incorporates the following modifications to the kit:
1. Improved onscreen rendering and better continuity between characters of similar shapes or components.
2. Support for another 350 stacks has been added. This brings the total number to nearly 900 stacks including some very uncommon Sanskrit stacks. We expect to add support for additional stacks as they are requested in later versions.
3. Greatly enhanced typographic support for all vowels, especially those that occur under Sanskrit stacks.
4. The keyboard now only produces fully decomposed forms (but we continue to support precomposed forms produced by earlier versions of the kit).
5. The encoding of several characters not included in Unicode have been modified to match the allocations suggested by TDHL. Older texts that use these uncommon characters will need to be rekeyed.
6. Complex Sanskrit vowels are now supported properly in all syllables produced by the kit. The old keyboard driver produced incompatible sequences for these vowels.
The Help files for this version of the Tibetan Language Kit are available on our website so that we can provide better and more frequent updates.

Output for the SPACEBAR key has been modified to produce a normal tsheg. In the SHIFT keyboard, a regular space is produced while OPTION+SPACEBAR produces a non-breaking space and SHIFT+OPTION+SPACEBAR will produce a non-breaking tsheg. A high resolution PDF file of the Tibetan-XTT keyboard layout can now be downloaded directly from our web site.

Version 1.0

This version of the Tibetan Language Kit for OS X utilizes Unicode and is specifically designed to work with OS X 10.2 and higher. We do not provide support for versions 10.1 through 10.1.5.

This kit provides support for the modern Tibetan, Dzongkha and Ladakhi languages as well as more than 500 Sanskrit stacked syllables. And because we support every glyph included in Unicode (as well several that aren’t included), you’ll be able to create all types of Tibetan documents. With the right software, you can use the Tibetan Language Kit for OS X to create bilingual or multilingual documents, web pages, emails and much more.

This Help file will provide the necessary information to use the kit properly and should serve as a reference whenever you have questions about the functionality of the Tibetan Language Kit for OS X. It cannot teach the Tibetan language and does not attempt to explain any grammatical rules. It is expected that all users will have adequate experience and knowledge of the Tibetan script.