RE: New draft of What is encoding

Hi Andrew,

This is all true, but this faq is about character sets, not fonts, so I
don't want to get into too much detail.  I will modify the wording slightly,
however, to indicate that some browsers do font substitution.

RI 
 

============
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)

http://www.w3.org/International/
http://rishida.net/blog/
http://rishida.net/




 


________________________________

	From: Andrew Cunningham [mailto:andrewc@vicnet.net.au] 
	Sent: 18 November 2007 10:14
	To: Richard Ishida; public-i18n-core@w3.org
	Subject: 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

Received on Monday, 26 November 2007 19:14:32 UTC