Re: FW: A product compatibility question
Gary P. Grosso had written: I sometimes wonder if XML or some other standard will evolve toward some standard use of markup to denote different languages. Mark Davis wrote: XML (and HTML) already give you the capability of marking language. Look at xml:lang. If you are using XML, you should definitely not use the language tags. See http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr20/. (Martin Dürst ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) and Asmus Freytag ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) are preparing an update which will be out some day.) See also Chapter 8, Language information and text direction, http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/dirlang.html from the HTML 4.01 specification (which also holds for standard XHTML 1.0 documents, cf. line 4 and 5 of http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd). Best wishes, Otto Stolz
Re: FW: A product compatibility question
Because of Unicode's Han unification, I was under the impression that to get both Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese to really look right would require using different fonts for each. To have different fonts for the same characters in a single document would seem to require use and recognition of language tagging. Am I just showing my ignorance on this subject? We are working with a client who is a publisher of Chinese medical textbooks. Our goal is to set up a configuration that will allow layout of English, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese characters in a single document. --- Gary Grosso [EMAIL PROTECTED] Arbortext, Inc. Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Re: FW: A product compatibility question
At 01:43 PM 10/9/01 -0400, Gary P. Grosso wrote: Because of Unicode's Han unification, I was under the impression that to get both Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese to really look right would require using different fonts for each. To have different fonts for the same characters in a single document would seem to require use and recognition of language tagging. Am I just showing my ignorance on this subject? If you want to show English and Chinese in the same document, unless (or even) if the English is strictly for Chinese audiences, you will most likely want to use different fonts. Standard office automation suppliers like Microsoft have behind the scenes support for that, so that many users don't even know that they are actually using a different font for Latin than Han. We are working with a client who is a publisher of Chinese medical textbooks. Our goal is to set up a configuration that will allow layout of English, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese characters in a single document.
RE: FW: A product compatibility question
From: Asmus Freytag [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2001 01:02 PM At 01:43 PM 10/9/01 -0400, Gary P. Grosso wrote: Because of Unicode's Han unification, I was under the impression that to get both Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese to really look right would require using different fonts for each. To have different fonts for the same characters in a single document would seem to require use and recognition of language tagging. Am I just showing my ignorance on this subject? If you want to show English and Chinese in the same document, unless (or even) if the English is strictly for Chinese audiences, you will most likely want to use different fonts. Standard office automation suppliers like Microsoft have behind the scenes support for that, so that many users don't even know that they are actually using a different font for Latin than Han. Oooh - a swing and a miss! He was talking about whether or not he needed separate fonts for Traditional and Simplified Chinese. Generally speaking, Japanese readers want to see Chinese characters printed in Japanese fonts when they convey Japanese test (i.e. kanji). This is very important to Japanese readers. Generally speaking, Chinese readers recognize simplified or traditional texts by the characters themselves, so a single font may be used for both. Generally speaking, if you are going to use both traditional and simplified text in the same document, especially if you are reprinting the same text in both forms, it is good to use different fonts so that it is visually obvious which text, traditional or simplified, is in any given section. I would suggest a font with heavy serif (brush strokes, triangles, etc.) for the traditional text and a sans serif rounded font for the simplified text, but I would *recommend* that you consult a professional Asian typographer for font selection if you are doing this. BTW, Han is scriptgeekspeak for Chinese, in case you didn't know. /|/|ike We are working with a client who is a publisher of Chinese medical textbooks. Our goal is to set up a configuration that will allow layout of English, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese characters in a single document.
Re: FW: A product compatibility question
I appreciate these responses. I am certainly not an expert in Han unification. I am trying to reconcile what John says with what appears at http://www.unicode.org/charts/unihan.html. For example, there appear to be stylistic differences, at least, in a character such as: http://charts.unicode.org/unihan/unihan.acgi$0x4E9E between fonts designed for different languages. Regarding Asmus' contribution, I would assume that such products use different fonts depending on what block the character is from, as shown, e.g., at: http://www.unicode.org/Public/3.0-Update/Blocks-3.txt Since I don't see any definition at the level of Traditional Chinese versus Simplified Chinese in the blocks, I don't see how an application could properly switch fonts in this case. Perhaps the answer is it doesn't need to but I'll admit to being a bit skeptical on that point. I'm open to being convinced. At 03:21 PM 10/9/01 -0400, John Cowan wrote: Gary P. Grosso wrote: Because of Unicode's Han unification, I was under the impression that to get both Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese to really look right would require using different fonts for each. Han unification does *not* unify traditional and simplified characters. At 01:02 PM 10/9/01 -0700, Asmus Freytag wrote: At 01:43 PM 10/9/01 -0400, Gary P. Grosso wrote: Because of Unicode's Han unification, I was under the impression that to get both Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese to really look right would require using different fonts for each. To have different fonts for the same characters in a single document would seem to require use and recognition of language tagging. Am I just showing my ignorance on this subject? If you want to show English and Chinese in the same document, unless (or even) if the English is strictly for Chinese audiences, you will most likely want to use different fonts. Standard office automation suppliers like Microsoft have behind the scenes support for that, so that many users don't even know that they are actually using a different font for Latin than Han. We are working with a client who is a publisher of Chinese medical textbooks. Our goal is to set up a configuration that will allow layout of English, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese characters in a single document. --- Gary Grosso [EMAIL PROTECTED] Arbortext, Inc. Ann Arbor, MI, USA
RE: FW: A product compatibility question
At 03:43 PM 10/9/01 -0500, Ayers, Mike wrote: Oooh - a swing and a miss! No -- a pretty complete misunderstanding of my posting on your part. The implication of my statements is that rich text support is required at least at some level of your architecture as soon as you want to go beyond fairly rudimentary support *even* for the common case of mixing Latin (English) with Han (Chinese...). The goal stated in the original submission was to create 'documents'. If this means high quality publications, then plain-text is not the answer. At 5:05 PM 10/9/01 -0400, Gary P. Grosso wrote: Regarding Asmus' contribution, I would assume that such products use different fonts depending on what block the character is from, as shown, e.g., at: http://www.unicode.org/Public/3.0-Update/Blocks-3.txt Since I don't see any definition at the level of Traditional Chinese versus Simplified Chinese in the blocks, I don't see how an application could properly switch fonts in this case. Perhaps the answer is it doesn't need to but I'll admit to being a bit skeptical on that point. I'm open to being convinced. Gary is correct that if you have a (rich) text display engine but plain-text data, the easiest way to do font bindings is by code point range. Many browsers are in this situation a lot. However, your font binding choices get better if you do a little bit of language recognition, which might well allow you to distinguish between mainland Chinese and Taiwanese Chinese texts, esp. since the most simplified characters have not been unified with traditional characters. Such language recognition (in the Latin context) would allow one to select fonts that match the local typographical conventions more optimally - there are definite differences, e.g. in the angle of the acute accent between French and Polish, but they are slight enough that ignoring them is a viable option. Finally, if crude output is all that is desired, the differences in the Han styles are slight enough that the text remains legible, even if mainland Chinese is rendered in a non-mainland font. Furthermore, one commonly allows the user to select a default fontstyle that matches their local background, and seeing the other language rendered in ones own font tends to make it more readable. (Printed publications where the same tradeoffs were made exist as well.) A./
