Re: Greek Extended: question: missing glyphs?

From: Doug Ewell (dewell@adelphia.net)
Date: Wed May 01 2002 - 00:47:48 EDT


Internet Explorer 5.5, running under Windows 95 -- a non-Unicode system
except for the UniScribe support provided by IE -- can display not only
Latin Y with grave and with acute but also Greek Upsilon with varia and
with oxia.

I can't see Pim's psili or perispomeni combinations because none of my
fonts support those two combining diacritical marks, but that seems to
be the only reason.

Given this, I would agree with Starner that the current situation is a
little brighter than "operating systems don't support the display of
combining marks in Latin/Greek/Cyrillic."

-Doug Ewell
 Fullerton, California

----- Original Message -----
From: "David J. Perry" <perryd@telocity.com>
To: <unicode@unicode.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2002 5:50 pm
Subject: RE: Greek Extended: question: missing glyphs?

> Unicode cognoscenti,
>
> The responses to Pim's question are all correct, of course. However,
I
> would make a plea that when answering such questions, especially from
> people new to Unicode, a sentence should be added such as the
following:
> "At the moment, operating systems don't support the display of
combining
> marks in Latin/Greek/Cyrillic. We understand that this is frustrating
> for some users, but, for the reasons already explained, adding
> precomposed combinations is no longer possible." It seems almost
> arrogant to baldly tell someone that they need to use combining marks
> when they can't do it!
>
> I do certainly understand that this situation is not the fault of the
> Unicode Consortium, and I do not mean to denigrate the work of anyone
on
> this list--you are all white hats, doing great work in helping people
> use more writing systems in better ways. I don't think anybody meant
to
> sound the wrong note, but (as someone who eagerly awaits OT support in
> Latin/Greek/Cyrillic) I think the replies did.
>
> In light of the above, Asmus' comments
>
> > However, it might be worthwhile to submit the gist of this
> > letter to the UTC with a request to document that the 'missing'
> > combinations are expected to occur, and to alert font vendors
> > intending to support classical Greek to make sure that their fonts
> > supply these glyphs.
>
> don't make a lot of sense. The combining marks needed are already
> encoded. What does this mean -- that font vendors should add glyphs
to
> the PUA? This does not help to further the standard. What we need is
> support for combining marks so we can use what has been in Unicode for
a
> very long time. I've read that support for combining marks in Latin
is
> coming in Office, and I am assuming that this means Greek and Cyrillic
> also. If anyone can confirm that, you would make my day.
>
> David



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