Re: Comments on CSS3 Fonts module

On Thursday, October 10, 2002, 5:36:51 PM, Peter wrote:


>> > Also, the set of characters specified in the current HTML DTDs is
>> > not really sufficient to display many important characters, [...]


That comment seemed to be a misunderstanding about the range of
allowed characters. Its not just ASCII+named character entities - its
all of Unicode.

>> HTML4 references ISO10646 which means it has every UNICODE character.
>> Ditto XML. Do you want HTML to have actual _named entities_ for all
>> 16000+ characters? That simply doesn't scale.

PS> This is true, but some method is needed for specifying the minimum set of
PS> characters that UAs should (must?) be able to render.

All of them. However, rendering any of them with the 'missing glyph'
(typically an empty rectangle, or a rectangle with a question mark, or
some such) is entirely conformant. The exact range of characters that
will be rendered with a glyph other than the MCG depends on the fonts
available.

PS>  To leave it to the whim of
PS> the UA if characters such as "zero-width no-break space", "non-breaking hyphen",
PS> and "LATIN SMALL LETTER SCHWA", and other special characters are handled

They are all *handled*. They might not be *rendered* with their own
glyph. Even if they are rendered with MCG, selecting the text and then
copy and pasting it into a file and displaying that file on another
system that *does* have the right fonts will preserve the character
data.

PS> are not severly restricts the quality and accuracy of text that
PS> authors can use.

PS> What do you think the best way of dealing with this would be? A
PS> w3c note about which ranges in Unicode should be supported by UAs?

How could such a note say anything useful?

PS> A similar addition to the XHTML 2.0 spec? Or adding named entities
PS> for a limited range of additional characters (math, dingbats, IPA,
PS> etc.)?

Adding entities would have no effect on rendering whatsoever.



-- 
 Chris                            mailto:chris@w3.org

Received on Thursday, 10 October 2002 12:55:09 UTC