1. Praat-Users-List
  2. Topics

IPA characters in Praat drawings

Leendert Plug
 

Dear Praat Users, I have two queries relating to an attempt at producing segmented waveforms and spectrograms with large bold IPA symbols. Apologies if these have been addressed in threads that I have overlooked! 

  1. Am I right in thinking that it is still not possible to force a string of characters entered on a Textgrid tier to all come out in Doulos/CharisSIL in the drawing, i.e. including the normal orthographic symbols that happen to also to be in the IPA (p, a, s, etc.)? (In a thread from years ago, Paul indicated that this was on a list of minor wishes for future Praat improvements.) I'm using Times as the typeface, but at a largish character size the differences between Times and DoulosSIL are quite visible in the output drawings.
  2. Is there a way to get superscript symbols to render beyond those in the IPA character map in the Textgrid view? I'm thinking of superscript symbols for velars, bilabials etc. for transcribing clicks, prenasalisation and the like. Textgrids don't appear to accept these strings, I'm guessing because superscript symbols beyond h, n, s etc. are not associated with dedicated characters in Doulos/CharisSIL. Is there a workaround? Thanks very much for any pointers.

Boersma Paul
 

dear Leendert,

can you send a picture where we can see the difference between Times and Doulos SIL? I know that there are differences for bold and italic (Times has a separate design there), but for normal face Doulos was designed to be Times-compatible.

For superscripts in the TextGrid window and also in the Picture window you can use the caret, e.g. "!^q" will give you an apical post-alveolar click with uvular release. Apart from that, can you give an example of a string that Textgrids don't accept?

best wishes,
Paul

On 24 Feb 2023, at 11:27, Leendert Plug via groups.io <l.plug@...> wrote:

Dear Praat Users, I have two queries relating to an attempt at producing segmented waveforms and spectrograms with large bold IPA symbols. Apologies if these have been addressed in threads that I have overlooked! 

  1. Am I right in thinking that it is still not possible to force a string of characters entered on a Textgrid tier to all come out in Doulos/CharisSIL in the drawing, i.e. including the normal orthographic symbols that happen to also to be in the IPA (p, a, s, etc.)? (In a thread from years ago, Paul indicated that this was on a list of minor wishes for future Praat improvements.) I'm using Times as the typeface, but at a largish character size the differences between Times and DoulosSIL are quite visible in the output drawings.
  2. Is there a way to get superscript symbols to render beyond those in the IPA character map in the Textgrid view? I'm thinking of superscript symbols for velars, bilabials etc. for transcribing clicks, prenasalisation and the like. Textgrids don't appear to accept these strings, I'm guessing because superscript symbols beyond h, n, s etc. are not associated with dedicated characters in Doulos/CharisSIL. Is there a workaround? Thanks very much for any pointers.

_____

Paul Boersma
Professor of Phonetic Sciences
University of Amsterdam
Spuistraat 134, room 632
1012VB Amsterdam, The Netherlands
http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/paul/

Leendert Plug
 


Dear Paul,

Thanks very much for responding so quickly. Above are two example images, in which I think the voiced velar plosive and schwa symbols look noticeably different from the others. I had meant to add actually whether it is possible to control whether Praat renders the symbols in Doulos or Charis if you have both installed; it might be that the IPA symbols in the above are actually Charis, not Doulos, but I don't know how to check. On the superscripts question, I realise now that I had only tried copying Doulos SIL strings into the Textgrids (from Word). For something like a superscript velar nasal, the Textgrid just recognises the velar nasal symbol, not the superscript. With the caret it all works -- thanks very much!

Best wishes,
Leendert

Henning Reetz
 

Stupid question: Why don’t you use Times for IPA? In newer OS versions, Doulos might not be supported anymore (it’s gone long ago on my Mac)…

On 24 Feb 2023, at 11:35, Leendert Plug <l.plug@...> wrote:

<cascav.png><zursto.png>
Dear Paul,

Thanks very much for responding so quickly. Above are two example images, in which I think the voiced velar plosive and schwa symbols look noticeably different from the others. I had meant to add actually whether it is possible to control whether Praat renders the symbols in Doulos or Charis if you have both installed; it might be that the IPA symbols in the above are actually Charis, not Doulos, but I don't know how to check. On the superscripts question, I realise now that I had only tried copying Doulos SIL strings into the Textgrids (from Word). For something like a superscript velar nasal, the Textgrid just recognises the velar nasal symbol, not the superscript. With the caret it all works -- thanks very much!

Best wishes,
Leendert

Boersma Paul
 

ah yes, you bare using bold characters, and for those we use Charis SIL, because Doulos SIL doesn't have true bold characters. Perhaps use normal type instead of bold?

If you do insist on bold, then mix Charis with Palatino, not Times.

Copy-pasting doesn't include formatting.

On 24 Feb 2023, at 12:35, Leendert Plug via groups.io <l.plug@...> wrote:

<cascav.png><zursto.png>
Dear Paul,

Thanks very much for responding so quickly. Above are two example images, in which I think the voiced velar plosive and schwa symbols look noticeably different from the others. I had meant to add actually whether it is possible to control whether Praat renders the symbols in Doulos or Charis if you have both installed; it might be that the IPA symbols in the above are actually Charis, not Doulos, but I don't know how to check. On the superscripts question, I realise now that I had only tried copying Doulos SIL strings into the Textgrids (from Word). For something like a superscript velar nasal, the Textgrid just recognises the velar nasal symbol, not the superscript. With the caret it all works -- thanks very much!

Best wishes,
Leendert

_____

Paul Boersma
Professor of Phonetic Sciences
University of Amsterdam
Spuistraat 134, room 632
1012VB Amsterdam, The Netherlands
http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/paul/

Boersma Paul
 

Doulos SIL is very much alive. There is version 6 for the Mac, which finally solved the plus-below bug.

Times has many very poor IPA characters, like for instance the length sign.

On 24 Feb 2023, at 12:41, Henning Reetz via groups.io <reetz.phonetics@...> wrote:

Stupid question: Why don’t you use Times for IPA? In newer OS versions, Doulos might not be supported anymore (it’s gone long ago on my Mac)…

On 24 Feb 2023, at 11:35, Leendert Plug <l.plug@...> wrote:

<cascav.png><zursto.png>
Dear Paul,

Thanks very much for responding so quickly. Above are two example images, in which I think the voiced velar plosive and schwa symbols look noticeably different from the others. I had meant to add actually whether it is possible to control whether Praat renders the symbols in Doulos or Charis if you have both installed; it might be that the IPA symbols in the above are actually Charis, not Doulos, but I don't know how to check. On the superscripts question, I realise now that I had only tried copying Doulos SIL strings into the Textgrids (from Word). For something like a superscript velar nasal, the Textgrid just recognises the velar nasal symbol, not the superscript. With the caret it all works -- thanks very much!

Best wishes,
Leendert


_____

Paul Boersma
Professor of Phonetic Sciences
University of Amsterdam
Spuistraat 134, room 632
1012VB Amsterdam, The Netherlands
http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/paul/

Leendert Plug
 

Thank you very much Paul. I take it from your reply that if normal type is used, Praat will go for DoulosSIL by default. Much as I like the bold symbols, I'd rather get the shapes maximally consistent, so normal type will be the way to go. By the way, I agree on the continued superiority of Doulos/Charis SIL over Times, but will leave it at that. 

Best wishes,
Leendert 

1 - 7 of 7