Re: Determining font for a given Unicode codepoint

On 2014/03/05 06:57, John Holt Ripley wrote:
> Is there a specification that details how a browser should determine which
> font to use for any given Unicode codepoint, or is it up to vendors to
> determine it themselves?

I think that as far as Web pages go, some of it is defined in the 
relevant CSS specifications.

> My understanding is that a browser will run through the fonts specified in
> the font-family declaration until it finds one that has that glyph. If not
> it looks at its own preferences, and then a system fallback font.
> I'd like to understand why the same page on the same machine would support
> Unicode characters differently in two different browsers, if both could use
> the same system fallback font.

The browsers could have different settings. They could also support 
different technology (e.g. OpenType vs. Graphite,..., WebFonts). They 
could also use different mechanisms to determine what characters/glyphs 
are covered by a specific font. Some browsers are very specific to a 
single OS, others work cross-OS, and that can lead to differences.

Regards,   Martin.

Received on Wednesday, 5 March 2014 04:58:53 UTC