Notes on the installation and use of my ‘Grand Alphabet’ font

Installing the fonts

Once the compressed zip folder (grndalphpack.zip) comes up, you must extract the two TTF files (grandalphabet.ttf and grandalphabet2) to the your fonts folder, which should be at C:\WINDOWS\Fonts. But your still not done. In the Fonts folder go to File, Install New Font and browse for the file, which will be in C:\WINDOWS\Fonts as you just put it there (You could just do this straight from the zip folder, but this is an easier way to explain it). Select both fonts and click OK. They should now be ready to use in your programs.

Using the fonts

These two fonts both have exactly the same key allocations. Here are notes on how to use them with English, German and Russian.

Use with Russian

The keys on the standard Russian keyboard correspond exactly to the keys in the Grand Alphabet font. So if you know how to type Russian on a PC, you can just type in Russian and the correct letters will appear on-screen. (See, at the bottom of the page, the notes on how to type in foreign scripts in Windows).

Use with English

Most keys correspond to the keys on the English keyboard, but with the following exceptions:

Note:
q, hard c => k
s, soft c => s
ph => f

Use with German

Most keys correspond to the keys on the standard German keyboard, but with the following exceptions:

Note:
ß => ss
ph => f

(See, at the bottom of the page, the notes on how to type in foreign scripts in Windows).

How to type in foreign scripts in Windows

Character Map: You can use this if you want the odd foreign letter or word that requires a non-English character. If you need to type sentences or a whole text it’s better to use the Global IME, which I explain in a minute. Character Map is under Start, (All) Programs, Accessories, System Tools. You select characters by either double-clicking them or single-clicking and pressing Select. Then you can copy and paste the character(s) in the white textbox into another application like Word. But most of the more exotic characters such as Thai, are not to be found in the Character Map, which is another case in which you must use Global IME.

Global IME: I am only sure about this in XP and it’s almost the same in Windows 2000 I believe. On the right side of the taskbar there should be a solid blue square with EN written inside it, which stands for English. If you left-click once on the square, a list of languages comes up and you can select languages by left-clicking on them. The square will then say something else like RU for Russian or DE for Deutsch. Then, when you type, the keys on the keyboard will correspond to the keys on the standard, say, Russian keyboard. So if you then type as in English, you get funny Russian letters instead. To learn which keys correspond to what letters in the selected language, I would advise looking at the On-Screen Keyboard, which is to be found under Start, (All) Programs, Accessories, Accessibility. NOTE that the Global IME will revert to English when you change the cursor focus, that is, clicking on another Window. So you should set the cursor focus before selecting the language in which you want to type.

If you don’t see the language you want in the list that comes up when clicking on the blue square, you must then right-click once on the square and go to Settings. In Settings, under the Settings tab, you will see, in the Installed Services box, an Add and Remove button. Click Add to add a language, or Remove to remove one already in the list. If some of the more exotic languages are still not available, under the Advanced tab you can click the boxes to install the necessary sets of language support. Then everything from Swedish to Sanskrit will be available to add to the list and use.

If you don’t see the blue Global IME square at all, try right-clicking on the taskbar, clicking Toolbars and ticking Language Bar. If that doesn’t work, the Global IME is probably not installed properly. In that case you must install it somehow. I suggest first looking under the Windows help section to see if you can do it within Windows.

I hope this all helps!

Enjoy the font!