Re: current version of unicode font (Open Type) in e-mails

From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Fri Dec 03 2004 - 06:02:09 CST

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    On 03/12/2004 09:40, Peter R. Mueller-Roemer wrote:

    > ...
    > With bwhebb.ttf I had success!

    But I don't think this is "open" in the sense you mean. It is, I think,
    a part of the commercial package BibleWorks, and not in the public
    domain. It is also a legacy font which uses Unicode Latin-1 code points
    for combining marks in contradiction to their Unicode properties - not
    to mention ignoring their Unicode reference glyphs and semantics.

    >
    > SIL-fonts and TITUS have been called legacy or not up to date in our
    > forum ...

    *Some* SIL fonts are legacy fonts like bwhebb.ttf i.e. not Unicode
    compatible, and so not recommended for use except among a group of
    people who already have them installed. *Other* SIL fonts are Unicode
    compatible, and so up to date useful for general e-mail, if properly
    flagged with a character set.

    I don't know about all TITUS fonts, but the one I recommended here not
    long ago is an up to date Unicode font.

    > ... and I found them disappointing for my purposes: Predictable
    > display and print of sequences of base + combining diacritical
    > sequence in ordinary e-mails on all systems.
    >
    I am confused. Are you using irony here? Or do you mean that the
    combining marks were displayed separately following the base characters?
    I would expect that with legacy fonts on some systems, but not
    predictably on all systems.

    The Unicode fonts certainly should give you predictable and correct
    results, at least on all systems using Unicode-capable mail clients.
    (But don't assume that even people at the Unicode Consortium use such
    clients.) Legacy fonts will work in e-mail only if you specify the font
    in HTML, if the recipient has the correct font installed, and the
    recipient's system chooses not to enforce certain Unicode properties
    e.g. that all Latin-1 characters are base characters and not combining
    marks.

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


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