From: Thomas Lotze (thomas.lotze@uni-jena.de)
Date: Sat Nov 02 2002 - 11:22:52 EST
On Sat, 02 Nov 2002 16:06:53 +0000
jameskass@att.net wrote:
> The ZWJ (zero-width
> joiner), for example, requests the OS and font to provide a connected
> or joined glyph in substitution for the string in the display, if such
> a glyph is available in the font.
In the meantime, I found out about ZWJ (this one could be mentioned in
the FAQ, BTW). Now I agree that it is preferable not to use ligature
code points in documents. However, this isn't a matter of principle, it
just avoids having to resolve ligatures into their constituents when,
eg, searching documents, and requires instead ignoring the ZWJ, which is
easier to do.
Regardless of how the document is coded, the fact remains that ligature
glyph shapes have to be stored in the font, at some code point. IMO,
they might just as well be given official code points instead of being
banned to the PUA. A side effect of making them official could be that
their use and, more importantly, their being provided in fonts in the
first place, is encouraged, which would be good for the quality of
computer typesetting.
> One popular, upcoming method of providing such substitutions involves
> OpenType technology.
As long as this doesn't mean ligature support in conjunction with
Unicode becomes (at least in practice) restricted to Opentype fonts,
this seems to be a good approach indeed.
Cheers, Thomas
-- Thomas Lotze thomas.lotze@gmx.net http://www.thomas-lotze.de/
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