From: Clark Cox (clarkcox3@gmail.com)
Date: Tue May 02 2006 - 07:44:16 CST
On 4/21/06, Tommy Nordgren <tommy.nordgren@chello.se> wrote:
>
> On 22 apr 2006, at 01.11, Philippe Verdy wrote:
>
> > From: "Tommy Nordgren" <tommy.nordgren@chello.se>
> >> Are there any fonts available that include glyphs for the entire
> >> unicode character set?
> >> (Macintosh compatible.)
> >
> > I think it's not possible for the existing TrueType/OpenType
> > format, given the limitation on the total number of glyphs per font
> > (but it may be possible with fonts which contain multiple designs).
> >
> > I see no interest in such giant font. At best, you'll find fonts
> > that cover a whole Unicode plane (these fonts make better sense),
> > and it will already be a very large font (notably a font that
> > covers the Han ideographs, but it will be true as well for a font
> > that would code the future Egyptian or Maya hieroglyphs).
> >
> > A font that completely covers the alphabetic scripts (including
> > alphabets, abjads, abugidas) and syllabic scripts is already very
> > large andvery complex to design, due to the number of
> > substitutions, contextual forms, and fine hinting needed for
> > drawing at small size or at low resolution on screen. And even this
> > font needs constant updates to cover the additions in Unicode, or
> > simply to correct bugs or limitations (missing substitutions or
> > ligatures or contextual forms) or defects (bad hinting).
> >
> > Keep things small. What users do want is fonts that correctly and
> > completely handle each script (letters, ligatures, digits) and
> > related signs or symbols (notably punctuation, and notational
> > marks). It's much easier to update fonts that cover correctly a
> > limited set of scripts. And it's generally more reliable interms of
> > results, given that some scripts require specific knowledge of the
> > script by the typograph (notably the contextual forms, ligatures,
> > and substitutions, but also the specific graphic design needed for
> > some scripts that have very different metrics and layout, for
> > example the hinting process for Han ideographs which requires
> > specific algorithms due to their graphic complexity).
>
> I realizes that such a font would require a lot of hard disk and ram
> space.
It's not an issue of hard disk space or RAM. It's simply that TrueType
fonts cannot support that many glyphs.
> The context in which i want to use it is for editing plain
> unicode text files. Text editors can't display documents in multiple
> fonts depending on which script each character belongs to.
Since you mention that you're using a Mac, unless you're using an old
OS (i.e. pre-OSX), pretty much any program that supports Unicode on
the Mac will do this automatically. What editor are you using that
this does not work?
> To be specific I want to edit test cases for a lexical analyzer generator
> that I want to be able to handle unicode.
-- Clark S. Cox III clarkcox3@gmail.com My CV/Resume: http://homepage.mac.com/clarkcox3/files/Resume.pdf http://homepage.mac.com/clarkcox3/files/Resume.html
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