Re: glyph selection for Unicode in browsers

On 09/26/2002 12:52:13 PM Tex Texin wrote:

>I would like to keep the sense of "Unicode font" as meaning a font which
>supports a large number of scripts, rather than meaning one that uses
>Unicode for its mapping architecture.

I suppose you didn't happen to attend session at a number of past Unicode
conferences (not this last one, though) in which folks from Monotype
presented on this these. In general, font developers don't recommend the
idea of a single font that covers "all of Unicode" (it's not possible, BTW,
given the 64K glyph limit). There are a variety of reasons for this. Even
so, people keep looking for them.

As for terminology, "Unicode font" is too ambiguous for the reasons Markus
mentioned having to do with cmaps. You may be far more concerned with
comprehensive coverage, but that isn't necessarily everyone's concern. In
my work, I have to deal far more with fonts that use different encodings
than I do with fonts that have comprehensive coverage. I much prefer to
refer to comprehensive-coverage fonts as "pan-Unicode" fonts, and for the
other issue, to refer to "Unicode-encoded" or "Unicode-conformant" (as
opposed to custom-encoded) fonts.



- Peter


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Peter Constable

Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485
E-mail: <peter_constable@sil.org>

Received on Thursday, 26 September 2002 15:25:58 UTC