The Tibetan script was entered as Tibetan in the original document. One does not need to view the converted Roman character nonsense
version at all. Rather, all one need do is use a Tibetan language word processor to prepare a document, and then, in Word, simply save it as an HTML document, which converts the Tibetan script automatically
into HTML format and preserves the fontface tags. The HTML conversion process replaces the Tibetan glyphs with Roman glyphs for purposes of the source code, but reverses the process to display the Roman
characters as Tibetan glyphs for display in the browser. This process is similar to what is happening at the system level for any word processing display. (See below for a discussion of the tools we use at this site.)Note that the above Tibetan text is an image
of how the text looks. If you want to see the same text displayed as text -- rather than as an image -- using the fontface tag, see our excerpt from the Ngedon Gyamtso. (To see the Tibetan text, your browser must meet
certain requirements, and
your system must have the samw.ttf font installed, which is available for download from this site.)
Specific tools we use to prepare our WebTibetan examples
The Tibetan documents displayed on this site were prepared using the Nitartha-Sambhota
Tibetan-language word processing system and Microsoft Word for Windows97. In Word, the
documents are displayed in their native Tibetan. After the example documents were created in their original Tibetan using Nitartha-Sambhota´s native Tibetan fonts, and we simply saved them as HTML documents.
Word automatically added the proper HTML fontface tags to display the Tibetan correctly. We then made a minor modification to use Samw rather than Sama as the basic font, since Samw
contains some modifications for the web.Nitartha-Sambhota for Microsoft Word for Windows works transparently in Microsoft Word. Microsoft Word97 and above is designed to create native HTML documents (using the ".htm"
rather than ".doc" extension). The combination of WinWord as a Tibetan document editor and html document creator is quite useful. Within Word, the documents retain their native formatting
using Tibetan fonts, and can be displayed and edited within the standard Sambhota program. The documents saved as html documents are automatically precoded for display on the Web.
Nitartha-Sambhota
is a very widely used Tibetan-language word processing systems, soon to be featured as the standard for display on the next Asian Classics Input Program. In our software development program, Nitartha
international is retooling Nitartha-Sambhota for a future release in which we will enhance the program´s ability to create, edit, and prepare Tibetan-language
documents for Web display, as well as for traditional desktop publishing. We have also successfully tested the Tibetan display with Marvin Moser's Tibetan for Windows.
Though the process was rather straightforward and easy, but there are some design issues
you should be aware of if you intend to do extensive WebTibetan publishing.As noted, moreover, there is the basic requirement that a font be
loaded in the operating system which houses the browser. There are developing standards which will address this problem. Please our discussion of Developing Standards for Tibetan
Typography for more details about the web technology used to display Tibetan documents on the Web. At some time in the future, Unicode fonts will be available on all operating systems
which will natively display Tibetan characters. For an intermediate solution which involves embedding or downloading fonts on demand, see our discussion of Sanskrit diacritics, where font distribution techniques are discussed applicable.
To download a MS Word or Adobe Acrobat version of this page, see our Downloads page and choose the white paper on How to Create WebTibetan Documents. How to create web documents with Sanskrit diacritics |
