Re: Tech: Unicode (was...)

OK, I got it. It's all awfully complicated and it
would be a huge waste of time and energy, and even
maybe money, since it seems that fonts are not really
free. So I'll better just give up, I don't want to
lose time on such tech puzzles. Just call me back when
a proper solution will be at hand. In the meantime,
I'll draw my own characters with a goose feather, and
send them by ordinary mail :-(


--- Christophe Grandsire
<christophe.grandsire@...> wrote:
> En réponse à Philippe Caquant :
>
> You are extremely naive. Practically, we're already
> used to using various
> fonts for various parts of the same document (for
> instance Arial for titles
> and Times for text). What's wrong in using various
> fonts for various
> scripts? the only thing Unicode ensures is that the
> fonts will be
> compatible, i.e. that no font can have a Cyrillic
> letter where another font
> has a Japanese katakana.
>
> >  So I don't know exactly what I
> >should do.
>
> Download fonts containing the ranges you need.
>
> >  At the moment, the Insert function just
> >proposes me some Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebraic,
> >Symbol codes (does this mean that other codes
> weren't
> >at hand in release 2.1, or just that the font
> >currently used is a subset of Unicode 2.1 ?) and
> >that's about all.
>
> What font is it? The Insert works on a per font
> basis. Look at other fonts
> and see what ranges they propose. If you don't have
> the ranges you need,
> look on Internet and download the fonts you need.
>
> >  So I suppose I should load all
> >range-fonts one by one (how many are they ?),
>
> That's a nonsense question. There's no body that
> created a set of fonts
> filling all the ranges in Unicode. Fonts are created
> by people who need
> them, and they put in the ranges they need. There's
> no such thing as a
> "range-font". Just look for fonts containing the
> ranges you need and
> download them. They will always overlap in some
> ranges.
>
> >  and
> >before doing an Insert / Special character,
> changing
> >to the font I would like to use. In that case, of
> >course the macros would be much more complicated to
> >write, because you had to add such tests as (for
> >decoding):
> >
> >- if the code is in the range[x,y], than first
> change
> >to font F, supposing font Z is at hand
> >- if it's in the range[x',y'], then tell the user,
> one
> >way or another, that he forgot to install font F'
> >- etc.
>
> That's what Unicode capable programs already do, in
> reading. I look at my
> browser, Opera, for instance. If a character it has
> to show doesn't appear
> in the main font of the webpage, it will use the
> character from another
> font to show it. If I have no font containing it, it
> will show a "no
> character found" character (depending on the
> encoding, it can be an empty
> rectangle or a diamond with a question mark in). Of
> course, if you're using
> Internet Explorer, you don't have this chance. IE
> isn't able to pick
> characters from other fonts than the one the webpage
> is written in. That
> makes it very Unicode-unfriendly.
>
> Is it so difficult to understand that the macro
> you're talking about is
> unneeded? Just use modern Unicode-aware tools, and
> it will already be built
> in. But since not everyone on this list can use
> modern tools (for various
> reasons), don't use Unicode on the mailing list.
> People who could use the
> macro you're talking about won't need it, because
> they already have
> Unicode-aware tools, and those who cannot use
> Unicode-aware tools wouldn't
> be able to use your macro anyway. Why reiventing the
> wheel?
>
> >Then probably the different fonts wouldn't belong
> to
> >the same release, etc.
>
> As stated already, Unicode has been stable since
> 1996. Since then, it has
> only *added* characters. It hasn't *changed* any
> character that was already
> there. Do you have any font that is more than 8
> years old? I doubt it. So
> it means that the only thing will be that your older
> fonts will contain
> less characters than the new ones. But those
> characters will be at the
> place where they are expected to be. In other words,
> all the fonts will be
> compatible.
>
> Christophe Grandsire.

=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


	
		
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