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Re: Font embedding

From:Boudewijn Rempt <bsarempt@...>
Date:Friday, May 7, 1999, 18:42
On Wed, 5 May 1999, James Campbell wrote:

>=20 > This would work, so long as you only need to use characters that are alre=
ady
> in the Unicode font (and if you can assume that your readers have a suita=
ble
> font installed [Herman, I've just had a look at your Kirezagi page, both =
in
> Netscape 4.5 and ie5, and all I get is empty boxes where the kana{?} shou=
ld
> be]). Conscripts such as the Klingon one (name escapes me) > and my own ri-tjal script for Rahha, which at present require gifs (or th=
at
> the reader download and install a supplied font), would be much easier to > handle with font embedding, don't you think? >=20
Well, yes, for at least part of the audience. I don't think we will see a single standard for font embedding anytime soon, and even then, if I were running a Windows box, I'd be more than wary of looking at documents with embedded TrueType fonts. The TrueType stuff is part of the kernel - the=20 part of Windows that can easily crash you machine. And TrueType fonts are fully-fledged little programs able to do all sorts of things with memor= y... When designing fonts (which I still have to do under Windows) I've often crashed everything, both under Windows 95 and NT 4.0. I think that for non-= Unicode scripts I'd prefer a good gif and a downloadable font mapped to somewhere i= n the more private parts of Unicode.
> > On the subject of mail clients, does this mean that from next year all ou=
r
> problems with accented characters getting mangled in the mail will be ove=
r?
> In the past when I was on Conlang, I couldn't write Jameld words like > "eskr=EFrem=E4" properly, but had to use colons and other mank (as above)=
,
> because most listmembers would receive something like "eskr$rem{". >=20
It should be - but this is software after all. I'm using a system that has parts that are about as old as I am myself... I'm typing this message in an editor which has copyrights in its source going back to 1980 - but it does show eskr=EFrem=E4 correctly, and I can type the letters too.
> James >=20 > =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
> James Campbell james@zeugma.force9.co.uk http://www.zeugma.force9.co.u=
k
> "Love's the only country I know" - The Blue Nile > =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
>=20
Boudewijn Rempt | www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt