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New Salish and Kootenai fonts now available to the public

The Salish-Pend d'Oreille Culture Committee reminds everyone that a new and improved Salish and Kootenai font, developed by Jim Ereaux, is now available for typing the Salish and Kootenai languages. The font works on both PCs (Windows XP and higher) and Macs (OSX).

The font comes with three typefaces.

The fonts works with either a standard keyboard or with the limited number of special Salish-Kootenai keyboards that the Salish-Pend d'Oreille and Kootenai Culture Committees obtained through a grant written by Mr. Ereaux. These special keyboards are now being distributed to schools and tribal departments by the Culture Committees. Other users interested in obtaining a keyboard should contact Shirley Trahan at the Salish-Pend d'Oreille Culture Committee or Vernon Finley at the Kootenai Culture Committee. The Culture Committees can order additional keyboards once they receive at least 25 new orders. The price per keyboard is $70 for tribal members and tribal institutions, $100 for others. It takes several weeks for the keyboards to be produced after submission of an order.

Keyboards arrive unassembled; assembly (removal of English keys and insertion of IPA keys for either Salish or Kootenai) is simple but requires at least 1/2 hour to 1 hour per keyboard. Again, the new font also works well with a standard keyboard.

CDs containing the fonts, keyboard layouts, and guides for installing and using the fonts will be available from the Salish-Pend d'Oreille Culture Committee for $3 per CD for tribal members, $10 per CD for non-members.

The Salish-Kootenai Font User's Guide -- included with either the download or the CD -- has all the information needed to install and use the fonts. The Culture Committee is not staffed to provide support to users of the new fonts.

Therefore, the Committee asks users to please read through the guide slowly and thoroughly and make sure you are following all the steps. Be sure to restart your computer after installation. If you still have problems, please, if at all possible, have your in-house IT staff help you.

The fonts, keyboard layouts, and other resources materials included in this distribution are the exclusive property of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, P.O. Box 278, Pablo, MT 59855, 406-675-2700. Users are welcome to make use of these fonts and keyboard layouts for non-profit educational purposes only. Any use or dissemination of these fonts and keyboard layouts for any for-profit purpose, including development of other fonts and/or keyboard layouts based on them, and also including use of these fonts and keyboard layouts in for-profit purposes or publications of any type (including electronic) is strictly prohibited without the prior written approval of the Chairman, Tribal Council, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

Again, the system requirements are as follows: PCs: Microsoft Windows XP or higher. The new Salish-Pend d'Oreille-Kootenai fonts and keyboard layouts will not work with Windows 2000 or earlier operating systems. Apple (Macintosh): System 10.4 Tiger or higher. System 10.1 to 10.3 may work with manual installation, but System 10.4 or higher is highly recommended.

The font can be downloaded at the following website: http://web.mac.com/jereaux/iWeb/
CSKT_Font_Resources/Downloads.html

The fonts works with virtually all PC programs running in Windows XP or higher, including MS Office. On Apple or Mac computers, the fonts work with many programs that run native in OS X, including iWork. However, Microsoft Word for Mac does not yet fully support the new font, but an excellent and inexpensive word processing program called Mellel works very well with the new font. You can download Mellel from the web at www.redlers.com/mellel.html

The Salish-Pend d'Oreille Culture Committee again expresses its gratitude and appreciation to Mr. Ereaux for his generous donation of countless amounts of his own time and money in helping develop a font that will be a great help for years to come in the ongoing efforts to revitalize the Salish and Kootenai languages.