“Unicode” is the name of the world’s global standard for rendering various scripts with computer fonts (“character encoding standard”). Thus if your essay involves roman script, or special diacritic marks, Tibetan script, Chinese characters, or any other type of fonts, using Unicode will ensure that your text will be viewable by others now and in the future. In the future, there will be no fonts other than Unicode fonts, but during this transition period there are still many non-Unicode fonts that people are accustomed to using. THL/JIATS only uses Unicode fonts, and requires all contributions to use a Unicode font.

For Roman Script and diacritic marks, VCP use the Times New Roman Unicode font.

While Arial Unicode MS is the most comprehensive Unicode font and contains all the diacritic characters necessary for Asian Studies, the Arial family of fonts is in general less aesthetically appealing than some of the other font families. For this reason, THL/JIATS requires the use of the Times Extended Roman or Times New Roman Unicode font for Windows users and either Times New Roman Unicode or the Gentium Unicode font for Mac users.

Windows: If you do not already have Times New Roman font installed on your computer, you can download it at http://www.acmuller.net/download/tnr.zip. Note: if you download this font, uninstall your current version of Times New Roman before you install the current version you downloaded.

If you have problems with Times New Roman, then use the free Times Extended Roman Unicode Font: download it from the Bahá’i Computer & Communication Association:

1. Click on the following link Download Times Extended Roman, and then choose “Save File” to save the file to your hard drive (note where on your hard drive you saved the file so you can find it quickly).
2. Double-click on the file, which has the file name tFont.exe.
3. Follow the prompts.

Mac: If you do not already have Times New Roman font installed on your computer, you can download it at http://www.acmuller.net/download/tnr.zip. Note: if you download this font, uninstall your current version of Times New Roman before you install the current version you downloaded.

You can also use the free Gentium font

1. Go to the Gentium Font page
2. In the section “Gentium 1.02 (Mac OS 9, Mac OS X),” click on the link Download Gentium_102_M.sit
3. After you expand the .sit file you downloaded, install the fonts as you would any other fonts. If you have an earlier version of Gentium installed, uninstall it before installing this version. In Mac OS X, copy the font files into the /Library/Fonts folder of your System disk. In Mac OS 9, drop the fonts onto your (closed) System Folder.

If you did not prepare your essay from the start in the Unicode font Times New Roman (or one of the other fonts mentioned above), you will first need to change your text into a Uncode font. A simple global highlight and font change will put your text into the right font, as detailed below. If your text has no special diacritic marks, this is an easy conversion that just requires highlighting your entire text and changing the font. If your text does have diacritic marks and uses a non-Unicode font, then all of those diacritic marks must be manually changed or automatically changed using a converter. There is no way around this; no website will support non-Unicode fonts in the future. Steps for Windows:

1. Click anywhere in the file containing your essay.
2. Select (that is, highlight) the entire contents of the file with the keystroke control+a or by pulling down the Edit menu at the top of the document and then clicking on “select all.”
3. Pull down the Fonts window at the top of the document and use the scroll bar to find Times New Roman. Once you have located Times New Roman, click on it.
4. The entire contents of your document should now be in Times New Roman font, and “Times New Roman” should display in the font window at the top of the document.
5. Save the file.

The entire contents of your essay should now be in the file you renamed (in our example, jiats-smith.doc), in Times New Roman font.