Multi-lingual documents, using Images

Some multi-lingual documents can be constructed, when all the languages can be presented using characters from a single font-encoding, as discussed in the previous section.

Another way to present multiple languages within a Web document is to create images of individual letters, words, sentences, paragraphs or even larger portions of text, which cannot be displayed within the chosen font-encoding. This is a technique that is used with IndicTEX/HTML, for presenting traditional Indic language scripts within Web pages. For these the L^ATEX source that is to be presented as an image needs special treatment using a ``pre-processor''. For the special styles defined in IndicTEX/HTML, running the preprocessor is fully automated, so that it becomes just another step within the entire image-generation process.

The technique of using images, can be used with any font whose glyphs can be typeset using TEX or L^ATEX. Using TEX's \font command, a macro is defined to declare the special font required; e.g. for Cyrillic characters, using the Univ. of Washington font:

 \font\wncyr = wncyr10

Now use this font switch immediately surrounded by braces:

 published by {\wncyr Rus\-ski\char26\ \char23zyk}.

to get:

published by .