Palatino Nisaba & Palatino Cuneitype

This is my (first) contribution to the panoply of different fonts "out there" that are tailored for use in Assyriological texts containing transcriptions. Rather than trying to squeeze in all necessary characters for regular text and for transcription into a single font, these fonts are split into 2 subfamilies. Nisaba is for normal text, and is essentially a "standard" TrueType font. Cuneitype contains the special characters, but contains enough of the "normal" ones to avoid having to switch back and forth within a block of transcribed text. Care has been taken to assure that documents written with these fonts are exchangeable between Mac and PC. Neither font contains characters that don't exist on one of these 2 platforms. NB: I make these fonts fonts available for non-profit, scientific purposes only. Please read the note in the documentation folder, and keep the full distribution intact.

Download the distribution, a single zip archive containing all you need, for PC and Mac. A table with all characters can be found here (big; you must have the fonts installed to view this page correctly!); or, have a look at the "users' guide". NB (16/09/2001): new version of the distribution!

Voici une distribution contenant des nouvelles polices pour l'Assyriology, basées sur le fameux Palatino. Il y a 2 familles: Palatino Nisaba et Palatino Cuneitype. La première est la police à utiliser pour le texte "normal"; elle contient toutes les caractères nécessaires dans la plupart des langages de publication. La deuxième famille est à utiliser pour les transcriptions: elle contient les diactriques, mais aussi suffisamment de caractères "normaux" pour éviter des allers/retours trop fréquents. Il y a une parfaite compatibilité possible entre le pc et le macintosh. Ceci est assuré par le fait que pour chaque caractère dans la police pc, il existe la même caractère dans la police macintosh, et vice versa. Pour + d'informations, voir le "mode d'emploi".

Pazuzu. This is a utility programme intended mainly for a particular kind of Assyriologists. Namely those that work on the Macintosh platform with a set of transcription fonts designed by Mr. D.C. of Paris. These 2 families, CunéiType1 and Mari, have a very peculiar encoding vector (computer alphabet) that makes it impossible to use them on any other platform. Pazuzu does the necessary to convert an RTF file saved on the Macintosh to an RTF file that can be read on Mac or PC, and that uses Palatino Nisaba and Palatino Cuneitype instead of CunéiType1. It can also do only the platform conversions. Currently, this programme has a very simple interface, and runs under Linux and Windows (in a DOS command window). I hope to be able to provide a Mac version at some time! This programme is also briefly discussed in the "users' guide".

Download Windows programme. This version requires the Cygwin library, that can be found here. Install the .dll contained in this archive in your Windows directory.

Download Linux programme (compiled for Intel Pentium).

Download the sourcecode. If you implement this on another platform (Mac graphics interface – OSX/shell should be easy!), please let me know!!!