Unicode support in Mac OS X (was: Re: How can I have OTF for MacOS

From: Deborah Goldsmith (goldsmit@apple.com)
Date: Tue Dec 02 2003 - 14:11:46 EST

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    Mac OS X currently supports Unicode in all Cocoa applications. Unicode
    support in Carbon applications depends on the application; the Finder
    and iTunes are examples of Carbon applications that support Unicode.
    Apple is migrating all of its applications to Unicode and strongly
    encourages developers to do the same.

    Apple does not currently provide tools for adding OpenType capabilities
    to fonts; such tools are available from Adobe and Microsoft. Apple does
    provide tools for adding AAT tables to fonts; as has been pointed out
    earlier, AAT and OpenType tables can coexist in the same font. Mac OS X
    does not currently recognize OpenType tables at the system level,
    though many applications do. To get system level support it is
    necessary to add AAT tables to a font.

    The tools and documentation are available from:

    http://developer.apple.com/fonts

    How to add keyboard layouts to Mac OS X is documented in Technical Note
    2056, which I mentioned yesterday:

    http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2002/tn2056.html

    Keyboard layouts can either be the same binary form as was used on Mac
    OS 9, or a new XML format which is documented in the tech note. Two
    resources for creating the new XML-style keyboards without editing the
    XML directly are:

    http://homepage.mac.com/poorant79/software/
    http://wordherd.com/keyboards/

    Finally, information like date formats, collation order, and the like
    come from ICU, the open source library (as of Mac OS X 10.3, Panther):

    http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/

    The best way to add new locale data to Mac OS X is to contribute it to
    ICU via the Common Locale Data Repository project (see the ICU page).

    Deborah Goldsmith
    Manager, Fonts / Unicode liaison
    Apple Computer, Inc.
    goldsmit@apple.com

    On Dec 2, 2003, at 3:22 AM, Mustafa Jabbar wrote:

    > Dear Sir,
    > Can you let us know about how we can have support of Unicode in
    > MacOSX? What are the tools to create OTF for MacOSX and What are the
    > tools for developing Keyboard for Uniocde under MAC OS X. What are the
    > tools Apple is providing like VOLT and MSKLC?
    > What are the applications supports Unicode?
    > We have Bangla solution for Mac. But how we can update it for MacOSX?
    > Fonts and the Keyboard?
    > Apple should speak up.
    > Mustafa Jabbar
    >
    >
    > At 04:36 PM 01-12-03 -0700, John Jenkins wrote:
    >
    >> On Dec 1, 2003, at 4:24 PM, Frank Yung-Fong Tang wrote:
    >>
    >>> John What 'cmap' format Apple use in the MacOS X
    >>> Devanagari and Bangla fonts?
    >>
    >> The formats are irrelevant; the Mac supports all the 'cmap' subtable
    >> formats for all subtables. For rendering complex scripts, however,
    >> the font can only be rendered through ATSUI (or Cocoa), because the
    >> old way to support complex scripts — via an 'itl5' resource in the
    >> suitcase with the 'FOND' and 'sfnt' resources — is not supported on
    >> X.
    >>
    >> Apple really, really wants everybody to move to using Unicode in
    >> their applications for all their text, and Apple really, really,
    >> *really* wants people to do it for complex scripts.
    >>
    >> ========
    >> John H. Jenkins
    >> jenkins@apple.com
    >> jhjenkins@mac.com
    >> http://homepage..mac.com/jhjenkins/
    >>
    >>
    >>
    >> --
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    >
    >



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