On 06/18/2000 03:12:13 AM <cfynn@dircon.co.uk> wrote:
>Unless Michael Everson's idea of variant selector characters is taken up,
there
>is probably no way to specify this sort of thing in Unicode without the
use of
>additional mark-up.
The use of variant selectors is appropriate only in very special cases
which do not include alternate Bengali conjuncts. Michael isn't the only
advocate, by the way; many members support the idea, and the impression I
have gotten from the UTC is that they intend to add some general purpose
variant selectors but just haven't gotten around to it yet (though the
pressures to do so are growing).
ATSUI and OpenType fonts can contain any number of variant
>glyphs for a particular character combination, but - unless the variant to
be
>rendered can be determined from context - the application has to have some
way
>for the user to select & specify the variant they want.
Since the original question made reference to font suitcases, I'm guessing
the context in mind is the Mac. One response mentioned the use of OpenType
features; AAT fonts (that work with ATSUI) also have a feature mechanism
(not exactly the same as OpenType features, but certainly very similar)
that can be used to specify variants. One significant difference, though:
while apps that provide user-selection of OpenType features are few (Adobe
InDesign is the only one I know of) and are limited in what features they
support, I think there are apps for the Mac that support user selection of
whatever features exist in the font. (I'm not certain about this, and I
can't enumerate titles, but that's been my impression.)
Peter Constable
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:21:04 EDT