Re: Unicode

On 18 May 02, at 8:26, Clint Jackson Baker wrote:

[Unicode]
> I noticed that this thing has almost everything
> conceiveable, but how well will it work?
It depends a lot on which fonts your page's visitors will have
installed :)

Even if you encode the page in Unicode and visitors use a browser which
understands Unicode, it won't help them display Cherokee if all they've
got is Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier New.

However, IMO using Unicode for languages such as Cherokee is better
than using specialised fonts.

> Now, I'm trying to develop a Kayasanoda syllabary based on Cherokee,
> and I've been painstakingly *drawing* the characters in Microsoft
> Photodraw!
Though for a web site it would be better to have one large image of the
entire text instead of one image for each letter.

> If I'm able to use most of the Cherokee symbols themselves (I'm going
> to have to augment them), then I'll have something that looks very
> nice.
Ah, that's another thing. In theory, Unicode has combining diacritics
so that you can add, say, an acute accent to pretty much any letter --
not only to, say, a Latin "a" to make "á" but also to, say, a Chinese
character! But in practice, browser support for combining characters
probably leaves a *lot* to be desired (especially the correct
horizontal and vertical placement of the diacritic over the preceding
character; and let's not mention multiple diacritics on the same
character).

> I'm going to start experimenting....
Good luck!

Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton <Philip.Newton@...>