RE: Single Unicode Font

From: Ayers, Mike (Mike_Ayers@bmc.com)
Date: Tue May 22 2001 - 17:48:45 EDT


> From: Carl W. Brown [mailto:cbrown@xnetinc.com]
>
> > For those who do not know enough to tell the difference between
> >Kanji typography and Hanzi typography (and Hanja typography ;-) this
> yields
> >no benefit and forces a meaningless choice (which script
> that you can't
> read
> >do you prefer?).
>
> If you don't care, then print an unprintable character mark.

        Hmmm? I don't care about the rendering style - I still want the
glyph!

> Facilities like mlang need to be a part of the system and
> easier to use.

        Even easier to use, it would be a lot. It may not seem this way to
you, but I see all this as a set of flaming hoops. I just want to see
characters without a lot of hassle. Even if I can't read the language, it
isn't until I actually see the character that I will know that it is one
which I don't recognize. An unprintable character mark could be something I
recognize, but for which I have no font. An all-purpose font would solve
that.

> If you have a single font that it could potentially have a million
> characters.

        1,111,998 characters total. However, I have been repeatedly assured
that we will never use them all.

> That is what I call insane since most people
> won't care about
> 99% of them.

        They will only care about the one character they get which they
cannot render. Since we cannot predict which one that will be, the only
sensible solution is to provide them all. In any case, "insane" seems to me
to be too strong a word.

> You will also have to provide multiple flavors
> for folks who
> want a Farsi font with Japanese.

        The all-purpose font should have *all* Unicode characters in it.
This would a priori cover all combinations.

> The combinations are almost
> endless. Now
> you are talking gigabytes.

        I don't understand how we got to GBs...?

> We have not talked about SanSerif
> or styles.

        *SIGH*

        Let's talk about them.

        I don't care about them. I don't want bold, italic or underlined.
I don't want serifs. I don't want dingbats (other than those officialy
encoded). I don't want colors. I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHAT THE FREAKIN'
CHARACTER IS!!!

        (pant pant)

        Sorry.

        Sorry.

        This computer communication thing is *so* much easier in the
commercials.

> Fonts will continue to be an issue. How do I mix center-line
> fonts with
> base line fonts? Script fonts don't work well with mono-case
> fonts. If I
> bold CJK fonts they tend to smear rather than be more noticeable.

        ...which implies a lot of job security for many on this list in the
years to come. I have no problem with that.

> There is no easy solution.

        I'm not asking for an easy solution - just a good start.

/|/|ike



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