On Sun, Jul 04, 1999 at 12:57:58PM -0700, Jeroen Hellingman wrote:
> >Wouldn't it be considerably simpler to just add a dotless j to the Unicode
> >standard so that font designers become motivated to include it in the
> >fonts?
>
>
> No, it is a glyph, and not a character entity in itself
So, what are Zapf Dingbats doing in Unicode? And what makes a filled
circle a character entity?
> Fonts should contain the glyphs required to print a script, not the
> characters defined
> to encode it.
That's exactly what I am trying to get: I have yet to see a font (other
than those I designed) that contains a dotless j. We need some kind
of standard that would encourage font designers to include it in
their fonts.
Perhaps we should split Unicode into two separate standards: One
that would only contain characters (that means no Zapf Dingbats),
and another one that would only contain glyphs (Uniglyph?).
System software could work with the glyph standard, while
application software would work mostly with the character standard.
And, of course, there would need to be an intermediate
software layer to map characters to glyphs.
Right now we have a mixed system: Unicode is open to accepting
characters from anyone who can prove something is a character,
but apparently accepts glyphs from those with enough clout, e.g.,
Zapf Dingbats, or certain geometric shapes but not others. The
situation is made more complicated with TrueType expecting a
one-on-one mapping of glyphs to characters.
Just my humble opinion.
Adam
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