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LOCATION: Basic Setup » Global Writer

Global Writer Foreign Language Word Processor

As of Spring 2005, the international word processor Global Writer is available in the Student Computing Labs (Windows only). This allows users to easily switch keyboards, including phonetic keyboards which mimic a QWERTY keyboard.

CLC Student Computing Labs: To open Global Writer, go to the Start » Internatinal Language Support » Unitype Global Writer.

Global Writer is available from Unitype for personal purchace.

This Page

  1. Basic Text Entry
  2. Save Text for Word and Other Programs
  3. Open Global Writer Text in Word (Windows)
  4. Open Global Writer Text in Macintosh

Basic Text Entry (Windows Only)

An international word processor called “Global Writer” has been installed in the Student Computing Labs Windows lab and supports a wide variety of scripts and languages and allows text to be exported as a PDF, Unicode text or HTML.

Student Computing Labs

  1. Log in to a Student Computing Lab Windows machine with your Penn State Access Account userid.
  2. Move your cursor to the Start menu, then select All Programs » International Language Support » Unitype Global Writer.
  3. In the new document, change the language from English to the target language in the upper-left pull-down menu. This will cause the keyboard utility to switch languages and you will be able to type in the correct script.

    Screen Shot: Global writer document set to Russian
  4. The default keyboard layout is generally a QWERTY keyboard in which non-English letters are matched to the equivalent English letter on the U.S. keyboard. To use a native script keyboard layout, select an alternate layout in the upper right pull-down menu.

    Screen shot: Russian keyboard

  5. If you need to see how characters are mapped onto the the keyboard layout, go to the View menu and select Keyboard.

Purchase the Programs

The program can be purchased for Windows home computers from Unitype.Com (www.unitype.com).

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Save Text for Word and Other Programs

If you need to save the text for someone who does not have Global Writer, but uses Word or another word processor, then do the following.

  1. When your document is ready to be saved, go to File » Save As.
  2. In the save window, set the Save As Type menu to Text Only (*.txt).

    Screen shot: Save As window
  3. Name the file and select a file location you will be able to remember, then click Save.
  4. A window will open asking for the encoding. Select Universal Alphabet (UTF-8) to save the file as Unicode then click OK. Your file will be saved as a .txt file.

    Screen Shot - Select U T F 8

Note: The same procedure also works for the text editor Notepad, which is usu ally located under Start » Accessories.

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Open Global Writer Text in Microsoft Word (Windows)

To open a Unicode text file (.txt) exported from Global Writer, do the following.

  1. Open a blank document in Word.
  2. Go to File » Open.
  3. In the file open window, set the Files of Type menu to All Files (*.*).
  4. In the file open window, navigate to the location of the .txt file. Highlight the file and click the Open button.
  5. A File Conversion window will open. Check the Other Encoding option and select Unicode (UTF-8) in the upper right menu.
    Note: Arabic and Hebrew documents also need to have the check the “Right-to-Left Alignment” option for direction.

    Screen Shot : File Conversion Window
  6. Click OK to open the document.
  7. To edit the document in Word, go to File » Save As. In the Save as Type menu, scroll up to the top and choose Word Document (*.doc).

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Open Global Writer Text in Macintosh

Unicode .txt files exported from Global Writer cannot be opened in Microsoft Word 2004 (or earlier versions) or in TextEdit.

They can be opened in the free open source word processor NeoOffice J (www.neooffice.org). The procedure is similar to the instructions given above for opening Global Writer tex in Word for Windows.

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This Web page maintained by Teaching and Learning with Technology, a unit of Information Technology Services. For questions or comments on this Web page, please contact Elizabeth J. Pyatt (ejp10@psu.edu).
Unicode character names and hexadecimal entity codes are taken from the public Unicode Character Charts.
Last Modified: Thursday, 26-Apr-2007 10:30:54 EDT