On 2001.02.23 08:37, Christopher wrote
>
> On Wednesday, February 21, 2001 8:50 PM
> Joel Rees [mailto:rees@server.mediafusion.co.jp] wrote:
>
>
> ...
>
> > Everyone could do what they want out there, but they would be
responsible
> > for publishing whatever needed to be published: representative fonts,
> > mapping tables for transforming to other sets (including, of course, the
> > common set), special rendering rules, compositing rules (which the IDC
are
> > not), collation rules, searching rules (which the IDC are part of),
> > whatever.
>
>
> > This implies the need for a standard to express representative fonts and
> > rendering rules. It doesn't need to be fast, just needs to allow each
> > standards committee to communicate their standards and exception rules
with
> > the others. Such a standard was not possible fifteen years ago, but I
think
> > it could be done now.
>
> ....
>
> There doesn't need to be a standard for fonts and rendering rules since
"smart" font systems like OpenType, AAT and Graphite can have such rules
built into the font. Since different forms and styles of the same script may
have different rules and requirements it is the font not in a standard that
such information belongs. The creator of the font is best placed to know how
the glyphs that font should combine and be rendered for any given script
/language combination and to choose which set of glyphs need to be included.
(It's perfectly possible e.g. to include regional and historical glyph
variants in a font - and features to access them - without the need for
assigning extra characters for them.)
>
> - Chris
So there's no misunderstanding, I do not advocate making default (or any
other kind of) fonts part of the standard.
What I want is to be able to send a piece of text with one or more
characters that I know the recipient will not have in his collection of
fonts, and have some hope that he or she will be able to see the glyph in a
meaningful manner.
To invent a character set is to inherently invent a non-closed set. I was
told this around twenty years ago in freshman algebra (CS) and I didn't want
to believe it. Living and working with Japanese people has convinced me that
it is so. If you need more examples, check Thomas Chan's post on fictional
scripts just a few minutes back.
Joel Rees, Media Fusion
Amagasaki, Japan
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:21:19 EDT