Mark Davis wrote:
> One feature that
> some systems have is composite fonts, where the "font" is actually a table
> of subfonts in some order (perhaps with specific ranges assigned to each).
> That way, someone can have the advantage of specifying a single font name,
> and get a full repertoire, without requiring a monster font. Of course,
> there may be little uniformity of style across scripts, or in mixtures of
> symbols, but at least you can get legible characters instead of boxes.
>
> Are there any plans to do something like that in Windows?
>
> Mark
> —————
On some level at least this already seems to be implemented in Windows with system / GUI fonts. e.g. in Win 2K Unicode file-names etc are displayed in the proper script in Windows Explorer if the system font for that script is installed. There are seperate system / GUI fonts for each script, rather than one huge font.
A problem with implementing something which allows you to specify a single font name and getttng a full repertoire is: Which font in script x matches font nnnn in script y? If I specify "Baskerville" for Latin text and that text contains a run of Arabic characters how does the system know which Arabic script text best matches Baskerville? Sure you could have a lookup table - but imagine getting users to maintain such a table with all the fonts some people accumulate these days. Font matching systems like Panose which might be used to automate this kind of thing seem to deal only with the characteristics of Latin and closely related scripts.
- Chris Fynn
-- Christopher J Fynn DDC Dzongkha Computing Project PO Box 122, Thimphu, Bhutan<cfynn@druknet.net.bt> <cfynn@gmx.net>
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