From: Murray Sargent (murrays@Exchange.Microsoft.com)
Date: Sun Sep 29 2002 - 14:38:41 EDT
John Jenkins wrote:
"This just seems wildly inefficient to me, but then I'm coming from an
OS where this isn't done. The app doesn't keep track of whether or not
a particular font can draw a particular character; that's handled at
display time. If a particular font doesn't handle a particular
character, then a fallback mechanism is invoked by the system, which
caches the necessary data. I really don't see why an application needs
to check every character as it reads in a file to make sure it can be
drawn with the set font."
Sigh. If I only had an OS like that to work with! There is the ransom-note effect though. Do you try to match the desired font characteristics? I should note that Windows XP does have limited "font linking" support as well, which works with system fonts. Unfortunately, system fonts have limited typographical appeal, so the missing-character/glyph problem is usually the responsibility of the application.
Murray
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