Re: Fonts across platforms....

From: Damon Anderson (damon@corigo.com)
Date: Fri Jun 05 2009 - 03:59:01 CDT

  • Next message: Otto Stolz: "Re: Fonts across platforms...."

    All the Vietnamese characters are available in Unicode in either
    diacritics and/or pre-compiled, including the currency symbol. Now, if we
    were talking about the older Chinese Pidgin (Ngo) that documents 200 years
    and older are written, I would say you are right.

    ---
    Cruft is putting it mildly. If I install the Vietnamese language pack for  
    OOo any chance it would use the precompiled characters instead of the  
    diacritics?
    -Damon
    On Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:49:01 +0700, Edward Cherlin <echerlin@gmail.com>  
    wrote:
    > On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 7:45 PM, Christopher Fynn<cfynn@gmx.net> wrote:
    >> OpenOffice on Windows seems to rely on Uniscribe for rendering complex
    >> scripts & combining characters - on Linux I think it is using an ICU  
    >> based
    >> complex text rendering system which may produce different results.
    >
    > No, ICU doesn't do rendering. OpenOffice uses Pango for Unicode
    > rendering, like most Unicode-capable Linux software. There are several
    > other rendering engines available, including SIL Graphite and the
    > engine in EMACS.
    >
    > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pango
    >
    >> In OpenOffice Writer on both platforms do you have "Enabled for complex  
    >> text
    >> layout (CTL)" turned on?
    >> [Tools > Options > Languages > Language Settings > Enabled for complex  
    >> text
    >> layout (CTL)]
    >
    > I was under the impression that many of the combinations for
    > Vietnamese are _not_ in Unicode. Is there a table anywhere showing all
    > of the possibilities?
    >
    >> For Vietnamese, you might get more consistent results across platforms  
    >> by
    >> using an input method that produces pre-composed characters rather than  
    >> one
    >> that adds combining diacritics characters after base characters. Then  
    >> you
    >> would not be relying on complex script rendering for Vietnamese.
    >
    > Input methods do not determine the form of Unicode text in a document
    > file. The software can take character sequences from the input method
    > editor and convert them to any equivalent Unicode normalization form
    > in any Unicode encoding format before writing the file to storage or
    > transmitting them over the wire. Word processing software should do
    > this so that text from different sources (including different IMEs)
    > can be sorted and searched in a uniform manner.
    >
    > See UAX #15: Unicode Normalization Forms,
    > http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr15/tr15-29.html, and Unicode Standard
    > 5.0 Chapter 5, Implementation Guidelines,
    > http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.0.0/ch05.pdf, for further
    > details.
    >
    >> - C
    >>
    >> Damon Anderson wrote:
    >>>
    >>> Ok, I'm a bit confused here... I understand that the major barrier to
    >>> display of Unicode lies in fonts, but how does this relate to  
    >>> platforms? I
    >>> have a document composed in OpenOffice on Windows using the Verdana  
    >>> font and
    >>> the Unikey unicode keyboard driver for Vietnamese. I open the same  
    >>> document
    >>> in my OpenOffice on Linux (Kubuntu) after installing the Verdana font  
    >>> and
    >>> many of diacritical marks are now on the wrong letters or shifted to  
    >>> the
    >>> right one character space. If even the font displays aren't consistent
    >>> across platforms where in lies the problem and how can I distribute
    >>> consistently displayed documents?
    >
    > Different rendering engines on each of Windows, Mac, and Linux. Badly
    > encoded fonts and incomplete fonts bundled with operating systems or
    > downloaded from random sites. Applications that do not use rendering
    > engines and fonts correctly. In a word, cruft.
    >
    -- 
    Damon Anderson, Business Director
    Mobile: +84 90 834-2421
    Email: damon@corigo.com
    Corigo Vietnam
    391B Ly Thuong Kiet Street
    Ward 9, Tan Binh District
    Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
    http://www.corigo.com
    


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