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On 08/05/2002 01:11:34 AM "William Overington" wrote:
>Well, I seem to have not understood the difference between ligatures and
>digraphs.
Digraphs (trigraphs, more generally multi-graphs or polygraphs?) are
combinations of letters used in a writing system to represent a single
phoneme; e.g. "th" in the English writing system to represent the
interdental fricatives /)#/ and /%h/. In some writing systems, the digraph is
recognised as a distinct unit in the enumeration -- the "alphabet" (I use
this in quotation marks as the writing system might not be alphabetic).
There are many instances of multi-graphs used in Latin, but they are also
to be found in other scripts. For instance, Indic scripts commonly use
single symbols to represent certain vowels but then also combine those
symbols to represent other vowels.
The symbols in a multi-graph do not have to ligate -- merge into a single,
contiguous outline. In fact, in most cases they do not. Ligation is not
impossible, though (but I can't cite any instances of multi-graphs that
ligate offhand).
>> I'd encourage you to wait for people who really know and understand
>Unicode to comment on someone's suggestion before you start suggesting
code
>points to see if they're even needed.
>
>Well, the chairman of the Unicode Technical Committee had already posted
>twice in the thread and various other people had already posted.
And did the chairman's response suggest that a new codepoint was needed?
(No.)
>On the matter of access to planes other than the BMP using older
equipment,
>that is a concern. However, I am looking at the possibility of a new
format
>for advanced font files which do not need operating system support and
thus
>can be used by graphics programs on a Windows 95 or a Windows 98 platform.
Please, don't go into it here as this is not something that the font
industry is about to even consider. There is little interest in investment
to develop new technologies targeting Win 95.
>nevertheless there is no monopoly on who may devise an advanced
>font format system and no monopoly on who may author and provide software
>which uses such an advanced font format.
You're free to do whatever you won't. But don't expect many others to join
you in this endeavour.
>Hopefully the Unicode Consortium
>will treat any advanced font format produced by anyone on an even-handed
>basis with advanced font formats produced by any other person or entity or
>collection of entities.
Unicode is in the business of developing a character encoding standard.
They need to coordinate their work with the font industry, but generally
shouldn't be directing the font industry in how to do their job. At the
same time, the Unicode Consortium needs to decide what they consider to be
representative of "the font industry". A lone font maverick going in a
completely different direction from the rest of the industry is not likely
to be given too much consideration if his or her system presents different
requirements on the Unicode Standard than the rest of the font industry.
Thus far, your suggestion of a character-based font format (which already
exists, BTW -- but not in *plain* text; it's XML -- see
http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/fonts.html) hasn't mentioned anything that would
present different requirements from the rest of the industry (and I hope no
such requirements are forthcoming).
- Peter
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Constable
Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485
E-mail: <peter_constable@sil.org>
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