Re: Basic question or maybe not

From: peter_constable@sil.org
Date: Thu Apr 29 1999 - 13:31:09 EDT


       Charles:

       There's a little more to your query that the responses so far
       haven't touch on: when you see \u-3999 in the RTF file, the
       number after the \u is a decimal representation of a *signed*
       16-bit integer. In other words, if you see the minus sign, add
       65536 to the number. In this case, you get 61537, = xF061.

       Now, if you look up U+F061, you'll find that it's in the middle
       of the Private Use Area. Why? Well, back when Microsoft
       introduced TrueType fonts, they decided that they wanted to use
       Unicode internal to the font, but they needed some way to deal
       with things like symbols and dingbats - such a character might
       not ever be assigned a Unicode value. The solution they adopted
       was to allow two flavours of TrueType fonts: symbol-encoded,
       and "WGL" or "UGL". The latter use only standard Unicode
       character allocations, and can contain large numbers of glyphs.
       The former have all the glyphs accessed in the font using the
       PUA sub-range U+F020 - U+F0FF. If Windows detects that a font
       is a "symbol" font (charset 2), then it will map 8-bit codes
       x20 - xFF to xF020 - xF0FF by adding xF000. So, what you're
       looking at is a character that's formatted with a symbol font.
       In fact, the Symbol font that ships with Windows has a Greek
       alpha at xF061.

       Peter Constable
       Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL



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