From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Tue Dec 02 2003 - 22:12:19 EST
Patrick Andries writes:
> > Using the official Unicode script name in English is not a problem.
>
> So you say.
>
> > But a OS vendor could as well choose to translate these names in
> > localized versions of this font if the OS itself is translated.
>
> Which seems more logical and slighty contradictory with your initial
> leniency.
No contradiction here: the default glyphs in Apple's LastResort font
show the English name of the script block TWICE (on the top and
bottom borders of the surrounding thick frame). Only one occurence of
this text is needed, so the English (official Unicode) name could
appear as a technical indication on the top border, in addition to the
localized name on the bottom border for users that want to see it.
Note that this does not require to include the true glyphs for
characters of the localized name in the font, but a simplified version
of them which is readable enough to be read, so even a bitmap version
of the whole name could be used if the font is hinted to display that
bitmap in the border only when the border thickness is large enough to
display it. So there's no need to create very precise and beautiful
letter forms for these indicators which should use a simple sans-serif
stroke style to reduce the size of these last resort glyphs and of the
whole LastResort font.
As borders can be made 25% of the M height+descenders (which can be
up to roughly 90% of the font point size), this allows borders to have
10% of the font point size. As these letters must not be higher than
this border width, this allows them to be about 9% of the font point
size.
For these included Latin script names, at least a 6 PPM representation
is needed, so such names won't be readable for such a font below a
minimum height of 67 PPM (on a 96 dpi display, a font drawn at
89 physical points, or 67 logical points).
If one wants to include non Latin names, the size of embedded names
will need to grow to about 11 PPM, i.e. the Last Resort font size will
need to be at least 122 PPM (on a 96 dpi display, a font drawn at
163 physical points, or 122 logical points).
I note that the glyphs displayed on the Apple LastResort web page are
bitmaps with bitmaps whose height is about 160 pixels (measuring the
linesize, not the font point size which is approximately 150 pixels),
and that's why they are very readable as they use Latin script names
drawn at 10 PPM. To allow rendering non Latin letters, the surrounding
border width should grow a little internally (about +20%). But Hinting
could allow this border weight to be reduced gradually for smaller font
font sizes where the indications are not displayed on that surrounding
border (so that the last resort glyphs can be still well identifiable
at 10 points on a 96 dpi display).
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