Re: missing characters: combining marks above runs of more than 2 base letters

From: Peter Cyrus <pcyrus_at_alivox.net>
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2011 21:04:30 +0100

I mention it because I think plain text could at least indicate what
_should_ display (instead of what *does* display), and a rich environment
could make the same text look great.

I think we'll all need for a long time more to write text that displays
adequately as plain text in the absence of even OpenType advancexd
typography features.

On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 8:46 PM, Ken Whistler <kenw_at_sybase.com> wrote:

> On 11/18/2011 11:21 AM, Peter Cyrus wrote:
>
>> Ken, you mention "defined markup constructions", but nothing would
>> prevent specialized rendering software from, for example, connecting a left
>> half mark with the corresponding right half mark via titlo, even though the
>> text is still only plain text with no markup, right? The titlo would
>> simply not display as such in the absence of the right software.
>>
>
> Correct. "Specialized rendering software" can pretty much do whatever its
> programmers
> want it to do.
>
> But there would be no reason to limit that to what it could do with the
> hacky left-
> and right-half marks, either.
>
> "Specialized rendering software" could detect a sequence <letter,
> combining titlo, letter,
> letter>, decide the three letters constituted a Cyrillic number and draw
> the titlo
> over all three letters as well. Or a "specialized" Cyrillic font could
> contain ligatures
> which would do the same, without requiring specialized code in a rendering
> engine.
>
> The problem would be there will be people who would expect such
> specialized rendering
> to be specified *in* the standard and be supported by *non*-specialized
> rendering
> engines and fonts, because their multi-letter titlos don't display
> "correctly" when posted
> on websites and viewed by people who don't have specialized rendering
> software
> or specialized fonts.
>
> That's when the answer has to be no. At that point, the responsibility
> really falls on
> the folks who need to score text to define the higher-level protocols to
> do so, and then
> convince the people who want to support that kind of text convention to do
> the
> implementation(s) required to make it happen.
>
> --Ken
>
>
Received on Fri Nov 18 2011 - 14:07:07 CST

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