Hi Mark,
You don't say what application you're running when you do this, but
clearly it's not just an ascii editor. If you save/export a file
in a unicode format, say UTF-8 (or any other), you would lose these
font changes you've specified. My point was that once such font
changes are removed, there is no certain way to reconstruct them,
or even to unambiguously determine which portions would best be
displayed in what "ethnic style" of font. (Please forgive "ethnic
style" and I'd be interested to hear more suitable phrases.)
My understanding of the responses was something like:
yes, there can be ambiguities but
- you could do something legible and probably acceptable, though
not high-quality typography by using a "compromise" or "generic"
font;
- it would be possible for "smart" software to make some guesses
about language boundaries. (I remain somewhat skeptical how well
this would work in general practice.)
- Finally, this would only be of critical importance in a single
document containing more than one language (in particular both
Traditional and Simplified Chinese) which is probably rare.
Since the company I work for saves documents in SGML or XML rather
than a proprietary format, this is of potential interest to us.
I sometimes wonder if XML or some other standard will evolve toward
some standard use of markup to denote different languages. It is
also ambiguous to try to intuit boundaries between most Western
European languages (how about Portuguese versus Spanish) and yet
they must be hyphenated differently.
At 09:19 PM 10/16/01 -0700, Mark Davis wrote:
>I must be misunderstanding the question. If I want different segments of a
>document to be in different fonts, I select the text, go to the font menu,
>and pick the fonts I want. I don't need to know the language of the text to
>do that.
>
>Yes, in very specific cases the font might be tuned to have a different
>display (French vs Polish) for different languages, but that is not the
>principal mechanism for display. In practical termsn, I would be more likely
>to simply pick a font that is tuned for Polish for the text that I wanted
>displayed in that way.
>
>Mark
>—————
>
>Δός μοι ποῦ στῶ, καὶ κινῶ τὴν γῆν —
>Ἀρχιμήδης
>[http://www.macchiato.com]
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Gary P. Grosso" <gpg@arbortext.com>
>To: <unicode@unicode.org>
>Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2001 2:00 PM
>Subject: Re: FW: A product compatibility question
>
>
> > I appreciate these responses. I am certainly not an expert in Han
> > unification. I am trying to reconcile what John says with what
> > appears at http://www.unicode.org/charts/unihan.html. For example,
> > there appear to be stylistic differences, at least, in a character
> > such as:
> > http://charts.unicode.org/unihan/unihan.acgi$0x4E9E
> > between fonts designed for different languages.
> >
> > Regarding Asmus' contribution, I would assume that such products use
> > different fonts depending on what "block" the character is from, as
> > shown, e.g., at:
> > http://www.unicode.org/Public/3.0-Update/Blocks-3.txt
> >
> > Since I don't see any definition at the level of Traditional Chinese
> > versus Simplified Chinese in the blocks, I don't see how an
> > application could properly switch fonts in this case. Perhaps
> > the answer is "it doesn't need to" but I'll admit to being a bit
> > skeptical on that point. I'm open to being convinced.
> >
> > At 03:21 PM 10/9/01 -0400, John Cowan wrote:
> >
> > >Gary P. Grosso wrote:
> > >
> > >>Because of Unicode's Han unification, I was under the impression that
> > >>to get both Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese to really look
> > >>right would require using different fonts for each.
> > >
> > >
> > >Han unification does *not* unify traditional and simplified
> > >characters.
> >
> > At 01:02 PM 10/9/01 -0700, Asmus Freytag wrote:
> >
> > >At 01:43 PM 10/9/01 -0400, Gary P. Grosso wrote:
> > >>Because of Unicode's Han unification, I was under the impression that
> > >>to get both Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese to really look
> > >>right would require using different fonts for each. To have different
> > >>fonts for the same characters in a single document would seem to
> > >>require use and recognition of language tagging.
> > >>
> > >>Am I just showing my ignorance on this subject?
> > >
> > >
> > >If you want to show English and Chinese in the same document, unless (or
> > >even) if the English is strictly for Chinese audiences, you will most
> > >likely want to use different fonts. Standard office automation suppliers
> > >like Microsoft have behind the scenes support for that, so that many
>users
> > >don't even know that they are actually using a different font for Latin
> > >than Han.
> > >
> > >>>We are working with a client who is a publisher of Chinese medical
> > >>>textbooks.
> > >>>Our goal is to set up a configuration that will allow layout of
>English,
> > >>>
> > >>>Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese characters in a single
> > >>>document.
> > >
> > >
> >
> > ---
> > Gary Grosso
> > ggrosso@arbortext.com
> > Arbortext, Inc.
> > Ann Arbor, MI, USA
> >
> >
> >
>
--- Gary Grosso ggrosso@arbortext.com Arbortext, Inc. Ann Arbor, MI, USA
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Wed Oct 17 2001 - 10:36:27 EDT