Re: Defined Private Use was: SSP default ignorable characters

From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Wed Apr 28 2004 - 18:37:05 EDT

  • Next message: Kenneth Whistler: "Re: Defined Private Use was: SSP default ignorable characters"

    On 28/04/2004 14:55, Philippe Verdy wrote:

    >From: "John Hudson" <tiro@tiro.com>
    >
    >
    >>Philippe Verdy wrote:
    >>
    >>
    >>
    >>>Interesting point. This would be an argument for the developement (out of
    >>>Unicode) of some standard technical solutions to exchange these private
    >>>conventions on PUA usage, including exchange of character properties, etc...
    >>>
    >>>Why not then within fonts -- namely in Opentype tables for fonts built with
    >>>these PUA assignments?
    >>>
    >>>
    >>Fonts are collections of glyphs. It is important to keep this in mind when
    >>
    >>
    >proposing that,
    >
    >
    >>somehow, character properties be included in fonts.
    >>
    >>
    >
    >This is not so stupid: a font made for PUAs will also deliver at least a
    >definition URI record. The actual character properties tables need not be
    >present within the font itself.
    >
    >So just suppose that a XML schema is created to reference or embed various
    >character properties data tables, and made accessible at a known URL or with a
    >well-defined URN, then such XML document could be sufficient to describe
    >completely what is in a private user agreement for PUAs.
    >
    >This means that this document URI can be inserted within the font (I'm quite
    >sure that the OpenType format already has such meta-tags table, in which a URI
    >could be inserted to access those properties).
    >
    >

    Why refer to something which needs to be downloaded separately from the
    Internet? I can't imagine users being very happy if their characters are
    displayed only when they are connected to the Internet, and so not when
    on the road with a laptop etc etc. And there are still an awful lot of
    computer users worldwide with no Internet access or only occasional and
    expensive dial-up access.

    So why not embed all the required data in the font? I would presume that
    the (compressed) character properties for most characters take up less
    space than their (compressed) glyphs, especially because commonly large
    blocks of characters have the same properties, so the amount of space
    required should not be a serious issue.

    As for the point that the font is not the right place for this, perhaps
    it is not the right place for some properties, but quite a lot of
    properties do affect rendering and display and so are sensibly an issue
    for the font. And if some properties are in the font, is it such a
    serious issue to put them all there?

    -- 
    Peter Kirk
    peter@qaya.org (personal)
    peterkirk@qaya.org (work)
    http://www.qaya.org/
    


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