Re: Unicode Cyrillic GHE DE PE TE in Serbian

From: John Cowan (jcowan@reutershealth.com)
Date: Thu Dec 30 1999 - 10:57:00 EST


Janko Stamenovic wrote:

> So is the idea of standard to cover different languages or not?

Yes, it is. But that does not mean that a single *font* necessarily
can handle all languages.

> Russian and
> Serbian are different languages, not a variants of the same language.

Agreed.

> Also,
> the problem is that the letter does not look the same AT ALL. Serbian would
> not read "m" as "t" ever, when it occurs in the text. We are not talking
> about different kerning, but about completely different letter.

It is a different "look" of the same letter. The same issue surfaces with
the different Japanese and Chinese "looks" of certain ideographs.

> Unfortunately for us, this is not visible when it is not italic only by
> accident. I will send you the GIF, I think then both sides would know what
> they are talking about?

Thank you for the images. This is clearly a font problem: as I said, Serbian
text should be displayed using a Serbian (Unicode) font, and Russian text
with a Russian (Unicode) font. Any font that has only one glyph for each
Unicode character is necessarily a compromise between different typographical
traditions, and will probably satisfy at most one of them, more likely
none of them.

-- 

Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! || John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com> Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau, || http://www.reutershealth.com Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau, || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Und trank die Milch vom Paradies. -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)



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