Re: Noto unified font

James, Any thoughts about a Code 2xxx suite/family based on all the work you've already done?

All, A tangential question wrt the history of computer font development: What kind of collections / repositories of old fonts are there? In particular, thinking of pre-Unicode "special fonts" including hacks for languages written with extended Latin characters.

I understand that Chantal Enguehard has a collection of 8-bit fonts developed for African languages. Are there others? Any thoughts about a "museum" of fonts and encodings? Could have educational value in the future.

Don Osborn

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-----Original Message-----
From: James Kass <jameskasskrv_at_gmail.com>
Sender: "Unicode" <unicode-bounces_at_unicode.org>Date: Sat, 8 Oct 2016 16:20:20
To: Unicode Public<unicode_at_unicode.org>
Subject: Re: Noto unified font

Philippe Verdy wrote,

> Technically it is not a single font but a coherent collection of fonts made
> specifically for each script ...

In a constantly changing world, it should be a pleasant experience to
be reminded
that some things remain constant.

Whether the Noto font family is released as one file or many, it seems that
somebody considers it a worthwhile endeavor.

Longtime Unicode proponents remember when complex script shaping (for
example) wasn't supported. Nowadays, thanks in good part to Unicode
pioneers,
most everything just works "right out of the box".

As it should.

With the advent of the Noto font (or font collection), users have the option of
getting a reasonable display of desired characters rather than strings of boxes
or last resort fallbacks. That's also as it should be, IMHO.

Best regards,

James Kass

On Sat, Oct 8, 2016 at 11:08 AM, Philippe Verdy <verdy_p_at_wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> Technically it is not a single font but a coherent collection of fonts made
> specifically for each script (some scripts having several national variants,
> notably for sinographs, most of them having two styles except symbols, most
> of them having two weights, except symbols that have a single weight and
> sinograms having more...)
>
> So no they are not "pan-Unicode". Each font in the collection however has
> its own metrics, best suited for each script, and they are still made to
> harmonize together (tested side-by-side with Latin and CJK) so they look
> great in multilingual documents. It would have not been possible in a single
> font anyway.
>
>
> 2016-10-08 19:57 GMT+02:00 James Kass <jameskasskrv_at_gmail.com>:
>>
>> Google and Monotype unveil The Noto Project's unified font for all
>> languages:
>>
>> https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/06/google-and-monotype-unveil-the-noto-projects-unified-font-for-all-languages/
>>
>> About ten years or so ago, I recall being actively discouraged from
>> working on the Code2xxx fonts because pan-Unicode fonts were passé, because
>> there was no perceived need for displaying multilingual text in a coherent
>> typeface, and that the optimal solution was for people to simply have
>> multiple fonts targeting the users' required scripts.
>>
>> Ironic, isn't it?
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> James Kass
>
>
Received on Sun Oct 09 2016 - 05:06:05 CDT