Re: New draft of What is encoding

Richard,

The section "What about fonts?" is
somewhat
misleading. Web browser behavour in the absence of a glyph
in a font is
browser specific. On the windows platform, IE will
display the missing
glyph symbol (usually seen as a square/rectangle)
while other browsers may
exhibit alternative behaviour.
Firefox/SeaMonkey and possibly Opera will
swap fonts and display the
glyph. Resulting in a ransom note effect. 

To make this more
complicated, the version of the font itself may
impact on display.
For instance Dinka or Nuer text will display in Times
New Roman 5.0.x
while you will see  missing glyphs in Times New Roman
3.0.x.
Internet Exlporer 7 will display all glyphs on Windows Vista, but
Internet Explorer 7 on Windows XP SP2 will display some missing
glyphs.
This is simply due to the two operating systems using
different versions
of the font. There are also other differences
between the fonts, not just
glyph inventories. TNR 5.0.x has has
OpenType mark and mkmk features
available for the Latin script while
TRN 3.0.x doesn't.

Andrew


-- 
Andrew Cunningham
Research and Development
Coordinator
Vicnet
State Library of Victoria
Australia

andrewc@vicnet.net.au