How to Put Arrows Above and Below Letters

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BkA

Hi there,

I'm working on a collection of chants for a Buddhist religious service. When chanting, certain words or phrases would be in higher or lower tones.

Was hoping to check and see if there might be a way to add arrows above and below letters to show a change in tone? In case it make the question a bit more clear, a photo is attached from a chanting book which uses arrows in this way. 

Much appreciation for any ideas anyone might have.

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GarryP

Welcome to the forum BkA.

Thanks for providing an example. It makes questions so much easier to answer.

Some ideas that quickly came to mind were:
* Find a font that already had the characters you need (might be tricky);
* Layer two text frames over each other (difficult to get the correct alignments);
* Draw the arrows manually (a real pain).

I can't think of any good Scribus-only solution that would do it, however you can probably get what you need by using LaTeX - or some derivation - in a Scribus render frame.

I'm not a LaTeX expert in any way so I can't really give much extra information on this but have a look at this StackExchange posting: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/159291/multiple-diacritics-on-one-character (The "stackengine" approach looks like a pretty good solution.)

It means you have something extra to learn but it might be quicker in the long run than a pure Scribus-only approach.

You would also need to be using a font that had both up and down arrows but maybe a caron or a breve would do just as well (both of which are in Arial, characters U+032C and after).

Having said all of that, maybe there's a much easier solution I just haven't thought of. Someone else might know better but this could be good enough for what you need.

BkA

Hi Gary,

Kind of you to post this answer so quickly.  Very nice to know about the breve and caron in Arial.  As it turns out, they did actually use a special font -- Gentium incantation -- for the arrows.  Much appreciation again for the tips.

~AB

GarryP

You're welcome.

Thanks for sharing the name of the font. People interested in this can get the font here: https://github.com/profound-labs/gentium-incantation-font

I've just done some very quick tests - see attached - and it can be used in Scribus as far as I can see, so no need for LaTeX or render frames by the look of it. Nice.

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