Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[jcowan]

Michael Everson scripsit:

> >Mind you, I'm not sure where, although OpenOffice is getting there.
> 
> Does that run on OS X? I thought it only ran in the X11 shell.

Even so, it does in fact run on OS X, though it does not have Aqua look and
feel and does depend on having an X server running.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 will most likely be Aquafied.

-- 
There is / One art  John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
No more / No less   http://www.reutershealth.com
To do / All things  http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
With art- / Lessness -- Piet Hein

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Tom Gewecke]

>>Mind you, I'm not sure where, although OpenOffice is getting there.
>
>Does that run on OS X? I thought it only ran in the X11 shell.

I think they have set Q1 2006 as a target for the OS X version.

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Peter Constable]

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Behalf


> Nonsense. Microsoft has many Mac OS users. Office has been ported to
> OS X. But Microsoft does not implement OS X's Unicode text engine.

I heard at some point (not from someone at MS) that they nearly did, but
for scheduling constraints.



Peter
 
Peter Constable
Globalization Infrastructure and Font Technologies
Microsoft Windows Division

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[John Jenkins]

On Dec 4, 2003, at 11:12 AM, Michael Everson wrote:

At 17:41 + 2003-12-04, Raymond Mercier wrote:
Well can we be perfectly clear about this: I read that OS X is 
Unicode compliant, yet I understand you to say that Word (as part of 
Office) on OS X is not. If that is true of Word on OS X then I am 
surprised - even amazed, but that seems to be what you said. Is it 
really the case that characters in Word in OS X are not stored as 
Unicode, even though they are so stored in Word in Windows NT (and 
later) on a PC ? If not stored as Unicode on a Mac, then how are they 
stored ?
Apparently Mac Roman. I don't know. Ask Microsoft.

Office uses Unicode internally, and Mac Office files are 
binary-compatible with Windows Office files.

For *drawing* and *input*, Office on the Mac is limited to that portion 
of Unicode which doesn't require complex or bidi layout, and which is 
covered by one of the old Mac scripts.  This pretty much means Latin, 
Cyrillic, and East Asia, although their coverage of East Asia is pretty 
spotty.

The Office people are perfectly aware that this isn't an ideal 
solution.  Whether or not they're working on it, I cannot say.  Their 
problem is that over the last couple of years, they've had two major 
transitions to make: one to use Carbon (so that they can run on X), and 
one to use Apple's Unicode-drawing engine (or some derivative of it).  
They've done the former, and no doubt at some point will attempt the 
latter.

This is true for most producers of existing programs, BTW.  The oldest 
date back to several years before Unicode and so have had to undertake 
three major rewrites:  one to use Unicode for text storage and 
processing, one to use Carbon to run on X, and one to use the new 
Unicode-drawing APIs.  That's a lot of work.  And there's been a 
certain hesitance, too, because the earlier versions of Unicode-drawing 
on the Mac were slow, although that's improved substantially in 10.3.

It's no coincidence that the bulk of applications which support Unicode 
on the Mac are new ones.  They don't have to rewrite anything.

It's also no coincidence that the applications which have their own 
internal text-rendering engines (e.g., Office and Adobe's applications) 
have lagged in getting Unicode display.


John H. Jenkins
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://homepage..mac.com/jhjenkins/

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Deborah Goldsmith]

Microsoft Office v. 10 for Mac OS X uses the same document format as 
Office for Windows, so the documents are indeed stored as Windows. 
However, since Office v. 10 uses Apple's obsolete QuickDraw API set for 
text rendering, it cannot render text that is not in a Mac OS legacy 
character set (e.g., MacRoman, MacJapanese, etc.). There have been APIs 
available since Mac OS 8.5 for rendering Unicode text directly, but the 
applications Michael Everson mentions are not using them.

In Office v.10, characters it can't render via QuickDraw show up as 
underscores. They're still there, but you can't see or edit them.

Deborah Goldsmith
Manager, Fonts / Unicode liaison
Apple Computer, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Dec 4, 2003, at 9:41 AM, Raymond Mercier wrote:

 Is it really the case that characters in Word in OS X are not stored 
as
 Unicode, even though they are so stored in Word in Windows NT (and 
later)
on
 a PC ?
 If not stored as Unicode on a Mac, then how are they stored ?

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Peter Constable]

> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Behalf
> Of Michael Everson

> >If not stored as Unicode on a Mac, then how are
> >they stored ?
> 
> Apparently Mac Roman. I don't know. Ask Microsoft.

It isn't hard to do your own experimentation:

- create a file with characters that must come from different Mac
codepages
- in the File|Save As dialog, look at the different file options
- save in native format; copy to a PC and see if the file opens directly
or requires conversion (in WinWord's Option dlg, make sure on the
General tab that the "Confirm conversion at Open" check box is selected)
- save in RTF; open the RTF file in a plain-text editor and look to see
how characters are represented and whether Unicode-related keywords are
used
- see if there are plain text UTF-8 or UTF-16 formats



Peter
 
Peter Constable
Globalization Infrastructure and Font Technologies
Microsoft Windows Division

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Michael Everson]

At 17:41 + 2003-12-04, Raymond Mercier wrote:
Well can we be perfectly clear about this: I read that OS X is 
Unicode compliant, yet I understand you to say that Word (as part of 
Office) on OS X is not. If that is true of Word on OS X then I am 
surprised - even amazed, but that seems to be what you said. Is it 
really the case that characters in Word in OS X are not stored as 
Unicode, even though they are so stored in Word in Windows NT (and 
later) on a PC ? If not stored as Unicode on a Mac, then how are 
they stored ?
Apparently Mac Roman. I don't know. Ask Microsoft.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Michael Everson]

At 09:54 -0800 2003-12-04, Peter Kirk wrote:

Nor does Quark XPress, surely?
I said, no. They are still playing language police.

And what motivation (apart from avoiding anti-monopoly legislation) 
does Microsoft have for upgrading Office on the Mac if that is going 
to reduce sales of Windows?
Nonsense. Microsoft has many Mac OS users. Office has been ported to 
OS X. But Microsoft does not implement OS X's Unicode text engine.

If you want a Unicode-enabled office suite for the Mac, look elsewhere.
Where?

Mind you, I'm not sure where, although OpenOffice is getting there.
Does that run on OS X? I thought it only ran in the X11 shell.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Peter Kirk]

On 04/12/2003 07:49, Stefan Persson wrote:

Raymond Mercier wrote:

Eudora on OS X does not support Unicode.


Eudora doesn't support Unicode on *any* OS, right?

Stefan
Nor does Quark XPress, surely?

And what motivation (apart from avoiding anti-monopoly legislation) does 
Microsoft have for upgrading Office on the Mac if that is going to 
reduce sales of Windows? If you want a Unicode-enabled office suite for 
the Mac, look elsewhere. Mind you, I'm not sure where, although 
OpenOffice is getting there.

--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
http://www.qaya.org/

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Raymond Mercier]

 Well can we be perfectly clear about this: I read that OS X is Unicode
 compliant, yet I understand you to say that Word (as part of Office) on OS
X
 is not.
 If that is true of Word on OS X then I am surprised - even amazed, but that
 seems to be what you said.
 Is it really the case that characters in Word in OS X are not stored as
 Unicode, even though they are so stored in Word in Windows NT (and later)
on
 a PC ?
 If not stored as Unicode on a Mac, then how are they stored ?

Raymond Mercier

- Original Message - 
From: "Michael Everson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 3:43 PM
Subject: Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?


>
> At 15:00 + 2003-12-04, Raymond Mercier wrote:
> >Arcane Jill writes
> >My next OS will be a Mac.
> >
> >Before you rush off to the nearest Mac showroom:
> >
> >Michael Everson 25/11/03 wrote
> >>Microsoft Office on OS X does not support Unicode. Quark XPress on
> >>OS X does not support Unicode. Adobe InDesign on OS X does not
> >>support Unicode inputting via  keyboard, and doesn't shape
> >>Devanagari properly. Eudora on OS X does not support Unicode.
> >>
> >>These companies have work to do if their products are to be
> >>Unicode-enabled for Mac OS X. It is frustrating.
>
> Do ***NOT*** quote me as a reason not to buy a Macintosh.
>
> Using a Macintosh is a joy. Unicode support at the OS level is strong
> and stable. That Microsoft, Quark, Adobe, and Qualcomm have work to
> do to allow their customers to take advantage of the richness Apple
> provides us is *their* challenge. And when they do, using a Macintosh
> will be even more of a pleasure than it is now.
> -- 
> Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Curtis Clark]

on 2003-12-04 07:49 Stefan Persson wrote:
Eudora doesn't support Unicode on *any* OS, right?
Indeed. I and I'm sure many others on this list sent feedback to 
Qualcomm at Michael's behest, but a fat lot of good it did. At least 
Windows users can copy and paste into SC Unipad to get an idea of what's 
going on, but my solution was to switch to another client for this and 
other email lists.

--
Curtis Clark  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
Mockingbird Font Works  http://www.mockfont.com/

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Peter Constable]

> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Behalf
> Of Arcane Jill


> Okay, I've read enough. I've got the message.
> Microsoft's view = make the customer pay through the nose for
everything
> you can possibly get away with

I don't see how my responses brought you to that conclusion. You were
looking for lots of symbols and math support, and got comparable answers
from several fronts.


> My next OS will be a Mac.

I'm sure they'll license some math fonts just for you. :-)



Peter
 
Peter Constable
Globalization Infrastructure and Font Technologies
Microsoft Windows Division

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Raymond Mercier]

Right. And they even have the nerve to charge for it.
I use OE.
Raymond

- Original Message - 
From: "Stefan Persson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Raymond Mercier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Arcane Jill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 3:49 PM
Subject: Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?


> 
> Raymond Mercier wrote:
> > Eudora on OS X does not support Unicode.
> 
> Eudora doesn't support Unicode on *any* OS, right?
> 
> Stefan

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Stefan Persson]

Raymond Mercier wrote:
Eudora on OS X does not support Unicode.
Eudora doesn't support Unicode on *any* OS, right?

Stefan

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Michael Everson]

At 15:00 + 2003-12-04, Raymond Mercier wrote:
Arcane Jill writes
My next OS will be a Mac.
Before you rush off to the nearest Mac showroom:

Michael Everson 25/11/03 wrote
Microsoft Office on OS X does not support Unicode. Quark XPress on 
OS X does not support Unicode. Adobe InDesign on OS X does not 
support Unicode inputting via  keyboard, and doesn't shape 
Devanagari properly. Eudora on OS X does not support Unicode.

These companies have work to do if their products are to be 
Unicode-enabled for Mac OS X. It is frustrating.
Do ***NOT*** quote me as a reason not to buy a Macintosh.

Using a Macintosh is a joy. Unicode support at the OS level is strong 
and stable. That Microsoft, Quark, Adobe, and Qualcomm have work to 
do to allow their customers to take advantage of the richness Apple 
provides us is *their* challenge. And when they do, using a Macintosh 
will be even more of a pleasure than it is now.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

Re: OT (was RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?)

[John Cowan]

Peter Constable scripsit:

> So, I'm going to grab the
> soapbox for a moment to offer some more perspective. [I'm sure most
> people here are aware that I was until recently representing SIL.]

Here are a few links giving different viewpoints:

http://www.publiceye.org/research/Group_Watch/Entries-119.htm (negative,
quite old)

http://136.142.158.105/Lasa2000/Hartch.PDF (outsider viewpoint, fairly
positive)

I was interested to learn that the Tok Pisin name of SIL is Institut
bilong Tok Ples, or the Institute of Local Languages; and to discover
why it's called the _Summer_ Institute (after the original summer
training programs; I had always assumed Summer was a founder or sponsor!).

-- 
Only do what only you can do.   John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
  --Edsger W. Dijkstra, http://www.reutershealth.com
deceased 6 August 2002  http://www.ccil.org/~cowan

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Peter Kirk]

On 03/12/2003 17:05, Frank Yung-Fong Tang wrote:

As long as a product support UTF-8 and pass the test with MES-1, I can 
pretty sure that no code in between strip off any non ISO-8859-1 
characters, regardless they support MES-2 or MES-3.

Of course, that does not guarantee surrogate characters won't get 
damanaged, but just as someone believe, it will be <1% of efforts for me 
to fix it later, right? :)

...
 

Doesn't the same apply to any Unicode 4.0 character, except that fonts 
and some special shaping functions (which are a font or rendering engine 
matter anyway) may not be available for some scripts? So we are back, 
more or less, to the concept I had a day or two ago of a system able to 
support the whole of Unicode 4.0 when the necessary fonts are installed. 
But then what about QA of each individual UTF-8 character, which you 
seemed to claim was necessary?

--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
http://www.qaya.org/

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Raymond Mercier]

Arcane Jill writes
> My next OS will be a Mac.

Before you rush off to the nearest Mac showroom:

Michael Everson 25/11/03 wrote
>>
Microsoft Office on OS X does not support Unicode.
Quark XPress on OS X does not support Unicode.
Adobe InDesign on OS X does not support Unicode inputting via 
keyboard, and doesn't shape Devanagari properly.
Eudora on OS X does not support Unicode.

These companies have work to do if their products are to be 
Unicode-enabled for Mac OS X. It is frustrating.
<<

Raymond Mercier

Re: OT (was RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?)

[Peter Kirk]

On 03/12/2003 22:53, Peter Constable wrote:

...
I hope I can give a fair assessment in saying that SIL has also made a
not insignificant contribution to getting the writing systems of the
world's languages, particularly those that are lesser known, supported
in computer systems and in industry standards. ...
 

I just want to add that a very significant part of this contribution was 
made personally by Peter Constable during his years with SIL. He has 
been a prime mover in pushing through the organisation a sometimes 
painful but in the long run very necessary transition to Unicode, in 
providing the tools required for this transition, and in educating many 
including myself about Unicode and its proper principles. I am sure SIL 
is missing him greatly, although it will continue to benefit from his 
promotion of Unicode now he is with Microsoft.

--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
http://www.qaya.org/

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Peter Kirk]

On 03/12/2003 18:51, Christopher John Fynn wrote:

...

If I was wrong about the motivation of SIL, their patrons or their patrons'
wealth,
I'm happy  to stand corrected. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong
with
the motivation I attributed to them - though there is apparently sometimes
some controversy about it's effects (e.g.
http://136.142.158.105/Lasa2000/Hartch.PDF ).
But I guess this is all part of "Globalisation"
 

I only questioned the patrons' wealth. I'm sure there are some wealthy 
patrons (not enough of them!) but no evidence that there are individual 
patrons who exercise control behind the scenes. Although of course there 
is a generally American evangelical mentality.

Thanks for the link to this paper, which is generally fair. I see that 
SIL has been blamed for offering medical care and that people gave up 
alcohol, cigarettes and womanising and started building better houses. 
Judge for yourselves whether this is a change for the worse. The 
following is important:

So the issue is not whether the SIL divides. Of course it divides. It 
is one of a host of outside entities, such as the Coca-Cola 
corporation, the Instituto Nacional Indigenista, the SEP, the Partido 
de la RevoluciÃn DemocrÃtica (PRD) and even the Catholic Church, that 
enter indigenous communities and divide them along any number of axes.


Some people may wish that this people group had been left in isolation 
and poverty, as some kind of living museum of cultures. But such 
isolation was no longer possible in the late 20th century. Also the 
community is made up of individuals who have needs and rights, and who, 
in part because of the work of SIL, have been enabled to take their 
proper place in the life of their country and the world.

--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
http://www.qaya.org/

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Peter Kirk]

On 03/12/2003 17:48, Christopher John Fynn wrote:

Peter

My message to Edward was off-line and he mistakenly replied to the list.
Apologies for any misunderstanding.
The source of my information  about SIL being backed by "very wealthy Christian
Evangelists" was someone who is probably the world's leading expert on
Himalayan Languages & Professor of Linguistics at one of the most prestigious
Universities in Europe.  He even named some of the patrons.
While in Bhutan, I met someone from SIL who was visiting there and came to
visit the department I was working for and he confirmed to me that a purpose of
SIL was to enable the spread the gospel in minority languages. Of course this
work also does a huge amount to advance literacy & computing in minority
languages in less developed countries - and SIL deserves a great deal of credit
for that.  Very few other organisations are freely contributing in the same way
and probably no one on the same scale.
If I'm wrong about the motivation of SIL or their patrons, I'm happy to stand
corrected. Not that there is anything wrong with the motivation I attributed to
them.
With best regards

- Chris
--
Christopher J. Fynn
 

Thank you, Chris. This is a fair summary of the work of SIL. See also 
http://www.sil.org/sil/history.htm and the rest of the www.sil.org site.

As far as the "very wealthy Christian Evangelists" are concerned, there 
are a lot of stories going around the Internet, some but not necessarily 
all spread by conspiracy theory nuts and/or by those with a clear 
anti-Christian agenda. I'm sure there is some truth there, and also a 
lot of exaggeration and faulty logic. For example, some of the arguments 
I have seen take a fact that A and B once had a meeting together as 
implying that A is the chief financial backer and secret controller of 
B's organisation.

--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
http://www.qaya.org/

Re: OT (was RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?)

[jon]

> SIL's involvement in Bible translation is not always widely advertised
> for various reasons: it is not the only work that SIL is involved in,
> not all SIL projects involve Bible translation, and in some countries in
> which SIL works the national agencies (government ministry,
> university,...) that sponsor SIL's work may not want that aspect of the
> work to be highlighted. But the connection with work in Bible
> translation has never been a secret.

While I have severe objections to the activities of some Christian non-profits, 
and while SILs translations may help such groups, I have to ask, what's so 
wrong with an important work of literature such as the Bible being translated 
into many languages?

If you are literate in English you can read the Bible, the Qu'ran, the 
Mahabharata, the Upanishads, the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, the Eddas, 
the Homeric Myths and the Irish Cycles in English as well as scriptures like 
the Book of Mormon or Liber AL vel Legis that were originally written in 
English. I've read about half of those and obviously not all of them caused me 
to convert at the same time!

I've you can, donate to SIL.

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Arcane Jill]

Okay, I've read enough. I've got the message.
Microsoft's view = make the customer pay through the nose for everything 
you can possibly get away with
Linux view = you can have whatever you want for free, but you have to be 
techy enough to understand it in some detail and/or write it yourself
Apple's view = give the customers what they want

My next OS will be a Mac.
Jill
> -Original Message-
> From: Deborah Goldsmith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 6:23 PM
> To: Unicode List
> Subject: Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?
>
>
> Of far more value than Apple employees pressuring Apple's
> management to
> cough up the money for new fonts would be Apple's *customers* telling
> Apple's management they want to see such fonts.
>

OT (was RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?)

[Peter Constable]

I know John's comments were intended to be private, but the point is
that now they're not. And while he was intending to make a fairly
specific point, the comments might have been taken by some with broader
implications than might have been intended. So, I'm going to grab the
soapbox for a moment to offer some more perspective. [I'm sure most
people here are aware that I was until recently representing SIL.]

Anybody can learn about SIL's involvement in support of Bible
Translation and the fact that SIL is a Christian organization have from
the SIL web site: these things are clear from the "What is..." page,
http://www.sil.org/sil/ (this page is linked from the home page).

SIL's involvement in Bible translation is not always widely advertised
for various reasons: it is not the only work that SIL is involved in,
not all SIL projects involve Bible translation, and in some countries in
which SIL works the national agencies (government ministry,
university,...) that sponsor SIL's work may not want that aspect of the
work to be highlighted. But the connection with work in Bible
translation has never been a secret.

There is a close relationship between SIL and Wycliffe Bible
Translators, though they are distinct organizations: WBT is the
organization that has the primary role in finding resources to enable
the work of SIL. Most, but not all, monies for SIL's work are raised by
WBT; other monies come from many other sources, including grants from
secular or governmental agencies. Most, but not all, SIL personnel are
seconded from one of several Wycliffe organizations from countries
around the world on all continents.

The Executive VP of SIL is also EVP of WBT, and the two organizations
share a common set of values, though the goals of the two organizations
are distinct, just as the two organizations are distinct.

I'm sure there are some very wealthy evangelical Christian sponsors
that, via WBT, back the work of SIL. Most large non-profit agencies have
some very wealthy sponsors, and being a Christian organization, one
should expect there to be wealthy Christian sponsors. (And, as Peter
Kirk observed, the wealthiness does not extend to SIL's workers; I can
corroborate that.)

SIL has had some ideological enemies over the years, but I think only
those with strongly biased positions would refuse to acknowledge the
positive contribution SIL has made to the benefit of linguistic
minorities, to nations, and to the field of linguistics. SIL has been
responsible for development of national literacy and bilingual education
in various countries. They have been given honours for their work by
various national governments. Many authors in the field of linguistics
have observed that no other organization has done as much to document
and preserve languages around the world. 

I hope I can give a fair assessment in saying that SIL has also made a
not insignificant contribution to getting the writing systems of the
world's languages, particularly those that are lesser known, supported
in computer systems and in industry standards. Contributions in these
respects have gone on for at least two decades have included:

- DOS-based tools for working with custom character sets, including
design of bitmaps and output on displays and printers, design of input
methods, customizable sorting, general text processes and text-data
conversion
- the Encore Fonts system, which allowed easy development of TTF font
instances supporting custom Latin, Cyrillic and symbol character sets
from a sizeable glyph library with several faces
- the Fonts in Cyberspace Web site
- tools for development of input methods for Windows (SIL members
offered significant input and support in the development of the Keyman
input method creation/management system from Tavultesoft)
- the SILKey input method development system for Mac OS
- tools for font development
- the TECkit encoding conversion system for Windows and Mac OS -- the
only customizable tool I know of that can be adapted for conversion of
thousands of legacy encodings used around the world to and from Unicode,
particularly where legacy encodings have utilized presentation form
encodings
- the Graphite complex-script font technology
- promotion of the Unicode standard, and contribution to the development
of Unicode and other related industry standards that facilitate
multilingual computing
- advocacy to industry of the needs of writing systems from the world's
lesser-known languages
- development of fonts for many different scripts, supporting literally
thousands of the world's languages

All of these efforts have been funded by SIL for the benefit of the
world's language communities; almost all of these resources have been
made readily available at no cost to user communities; and all with no
preference or bias based on religion, race or nationality of the user
communities.


So, if someone has a quality font for one of the less-well-supported
scripts of the world (or even one of the better-supported o

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Doug Ewell]

Frank Yung-Fong Tang  wrote:

> Of course, that does not guarantee surrogate characters won't get
> damanaged, but just as someone believe, it will be <1% of efforts for
> me to fix it later, right? :)

No, Frank, that is the exact OPPOSITE of what I believe.  Retrofitting
is hard.  Supporting the Astral Planes in your original design is
comparatively easy.

Please stop misquoting me.

-Doug Ewell
 Fullerton, California
 http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Patrick Andries]

- Message d'origine - 
De: "Peter Constable"

> Why not start the campaign early: everybody who's been using Code 2000
> go to http://www.paypal.com and log in (if you don't have an account, go
> ahead and create one), then click on the "Send Money" tab, simply enter
> "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" in the box for the recipient's email address, enter
> "5" in the amount box, and click on the "Continue" button. It's all
> pretty straight forward.

[PA] Good idea.

[PA] Paypal should really accept characters others than the so called  Â
English  characters, it does not even accept accented onesâ

P. A.

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[John Cowan]

Peter Constable scripsit:

> A button on his web site would obviously make things easier, but all one
> has to do is go to the PayPal site and send $5 to James' email address
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. I just did it recently and it's pretty easy.

Certainly.  The idea is to make things as easy as possible, so that
people will actually pay.  If moral suasion were sufficient, they would
have paid already -- and I include myself.

There are advantages to making something part of an, ahem, mass movement.

-- 
John Cowan  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"'My young friend, if you do not now, immediately and instantly, pull
as hard as ever you can, it is my opinion that your acquaintance in the
large-pattern leather ulster' (and by this he meant the Crocodile) 'will
jerk you into yonder limpid stream before you can say Jack Robinson.'"
--the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Peter Constable]

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On
> Behalf Of John Cowan


> Okay.  Your bit is to put a PayPal payment button on your website that
> does the right thing.

A button on his web site would obviously make things easier, but all one
has to do is go to the PayPal site and send $5 to James' email address
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. I just did it recently and it's pretty easy.



> Our bit is to pick a day (probably early in
> January) and proselytize.

Why not start the campaign early: everybody who's been using Code 2000
go to http://www.paypal.com and log in (if you don't have an account, go
ahead and create one), then click on the "Send Money" tab, simply enter
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" in the box for the recipient's email address, enter
"5" in the amount box, and click on the "Continue" button. It's all
pretty straight forward.



Peter Constable

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[John Cowan]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] scripsit:

> There are probably more people using Code2000 than would be
> suggested by the literally dozens of users who have actually
> registered over the past six years.

Okay.  Your bit is to put a PayPal payment button on your website that
does the right thing.  Our bit is to pick a day (probably early in
January) and proselytize.

-- 
John Cowan  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://www.reutershealth.comhttp://www.ccil.org/~cowan
.e'osai ko sarji la lojban.
Please support Lojban!  http://www.lojban.org

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[John Cowan]

John Hudson scripsit:

> Both kinds of information may be necessary, depending on the writing 
> system (particular application of a particular script to a particular 
> language). Encoding a particular glyph as U+00431 in a font cmap table is 
> script-specific information; a glyph substitution lookup that replaces 
> that glyph with a different one when the language is Serbian is 
> language-specific information.

And in particular, whether a given Indic ligature is required, permitted,
or forbidden within a particular script depends on the language being
written.  This is also true in a small way even in Latin:  the fi-ligature
is forbidden in Turkish for practical reasons, and (I have heard) in
Portuguese for reasons of tradition.

> Note, however, that not everything one may want to happen in a font is 
> neatly divisible into script and language. There may be distinct 
> typographic traditions in the setting of the same language. Catering for 
> these in architectures that are nominally limited to script and language 
> distinctions is very tricky.

Indeed.  German is the obvious example.

-- 
John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com
Micropayment advocates mistakenly believe that efficient allocation of
resources is the purpose of markets.  Efficiency is a byproduct of market
systems, not their goal.  The reasons markets work are not because users
have embraced efficiency but because markets are the best place to allow
users to maximize their preferences, and very often their preferences are
not for conservation of cheap resources.  --Clay Shirkey

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Christopher John Fynn]

Peter

My message to Edward was off-line and he mistakenly replied to the list.
Apologies for any misunderstanding.

The source of my information  about SIL being backed by "very wealthy Christian
Evangelists" was someone who is probably the world's leading expert on
Himalayan Languages & Professor of Linguistics at one of the most prestigious
Universities in Europe.  He even named some of the patrons.

While in Bhutan, I met someone from SIL who was visiting there and came to
visit the department I was working for and he confirmed to me that a purpose of
SIL was to enable the spread the gospel in minority languages. Of course this
work also does a huge amount to advance literacy & computing in minority
languages in less developed countries - and SIL deserves a great deal of credit
for that.  Very few other organisations are freely contributing in the same way
and probably no one on the same scale.

If I'm wrong about the motivation of SIL or their patrons, I'm happy to stand
corrected. Not that there is anything wrong with the motivation I attributed to
them.

With best regards

- Chris
--
Christopher J. Fynn



- Original Message - 
From: "Peter Kirk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Edward H. Trager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Christopher John Fynn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 11:37 PM
Subject: Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?


> On 03/12/2003 14:46, Edward H. Trager wrote:
>
> >On Wednesday 2003.12.03 19:59:45 -, Christopher John Fynn wrote:
> >
> >
> >>>or donate them to a community organization
> >>>like SIL (http://www.sil.org/) or PrimoÅ Peterlin's FreeFont project
> >>>(http://www.nongnu.org/freefont/).
> >>>
> >>>
> >>Ed, SIL is backed by very wealthy Christian evangelists whose purpose is to
> >>translate the Bible and other Christian material into every language.
Depending
> >>on your POV you might consider them to be a  community organization" or as
some
> >>kind of religious imperialists.

> >Thanks, Chris, I did not know that.  I recently saw some good publicity
about the
> >author of the Gentium font who I believe works for SIL and that's really all
I know
> >about them.

> I was a member of SIL for ten years but never heard anything about any
> "very wealthy Christian evangelists", or saw any of their wealth. One
> purpose of SIL is to advance literacy in minority languages, generally
> working with governments, universities etc in less developed countries.
> Such literacy is of course closely linked to computer support for these
> languages' alphabets, hence the involvement in Unicode and with
> providing fonts.

> Peter Kirk
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal)
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
> http://www.qaya.org/
>

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Christopher John Fynn]

Peter

My message to Edward was off-list and he mistakenly replied to the list. My
apologies for any misunderstanding.

The source of my information  about SIL being backed by "very wealthy Christian
Evangelists" was someone who is probably the world's leading expert on
Himalayan Languages & Professor of Linguistics at one of the most prestigious
Universities in Europe.  He even named some of the patrons at least one of whom
was a very rich person in the oil business. Given the source, I took the
information
to be reliable.

SIL and  "Wycliffe Bible Translators International" also seem to share the same
Executive Officer
- so  it's quite natural to assume that the underlying purpose of both
organisations is the same or very similar.

A quick search will also find SIL is included in a database of  "Churches and
Denominations"

http://www.crosssearch.com/Churches_and_Denominations/Churches/Churches_by_Location/United_States/Texas/5010.php
and referenced numerous places like "Mission Frontiers" e.g
http://www.missionfrontiers.org/1996/0508/ma9612.htm;
http://www.missionfrontiers.org/1996/0508/ma963.htm

While in Bhutan, I also met someone from SIL who was visiting there and came to
visit the department I was working for and he confirmed to me that the purpose
of
SIL was to enable the spread the gospel in minority languages. Of course this
work also does a huge amount to advance literacy & computing in minority
languages in less developed countries - and SIL deserves a great deal of credit
for this.  Very few other organisations are freely contributing this sort of
work
and maybe no one else on the same scale or in quite the same way.
Though the UNDP, IDRC and a number of other NGO's  contribute a lot too
and there is the Script Encoding Initiative and numerous Linux i18n & l10n
efforts.

If I was wrong about the motivation of SIL, their patrons or their patrons'
wealth,
I'm happy  to stand corrected. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong
with
the motivation I attributed to them - though there is apparently sometimes
some controversy about it's effects (e.g.
http://136.142.158.105/Lasa2000/Hartch.PDF ).
But I guess this is all part of "Globalisation"

With best regards

- Chris
--
Christopher J. Fynn

- Original Message - 
From: "Peter Kirk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Edward H. Trager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Christopher John Fynn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 11:37 PM
Subject: Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?


> On 03/12/2003 14:46, Edward H. Trager wrote:
>
> >On Wednesday 2003.12.03 19:59:45 -, Christopher John Fynn wrote:
> >
> >
> >>>or donate them to a community organization
> >>>like SIL (http://www.sil.org/) or PrimoÅ Peterlin's FreeFont project
> >>>(http://www.nongnu.org/freefont/).
> >>>
> >>>
> >>Ed, SIL is backed by very wealthy Christian evangelists whose purpose is to
> >>translate the Bible and other Christian material into every language.
Depending
> >>on your POV you might consider them to be a  community organization" or as
some
> >>kind of religious imperialists.

> >Thanks, Chris, I did not know that.  I recently saw some good publicity
about the
> >author of the Gentium font who I believe works for SIL and that's really all
I know
> >about them.

> I was a member of SIL for ten years but never heard anything about any
> "very wealthy Christian evangelists", or saw any of their wealth. One
> purpose of SIL is to advance literacy in minority languages, generally
> working with governments, universities etc in less developed countries.
> Such literacy is of course closely linked to computer support for these
> languages' alphabets, hence the involvement in Unicode and with
> providing fonts.

> Peter Kirk
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal)
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
> http://www.qaya.org/

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Philippe Verdy]

Peter Lofting [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Do you have references to the German as well as French script names...and
any others ?

For French, I could translate them myself, but you'll find normative French
names within ISO/IEC 10646 which names all its assigned blocks in the
published French version.

The assigned 4-letter codes for scripts however come from a RFC published in
English only (the RFC makes a normative reference to the English names found
in both ISO/IEC 10646 and Unicode), but the source of information may
finally be now ISO-10646 only as it is the entity that manages character
repertoires and subsets.

Unicode manages character properties and composition rules, but I do think
that ISO-10646 is more trustable than Unicode to define script names and
their associated repertoire subset, even if both entities share now an
agreement for this convention, as the script associated with a character is
also a character property in the domain of competence of Unicode. Who ever
will make the proposal, and who will decide is another issue.

But generally Unicode takes a longer time to include new characters in the
common repertoire than ISO/IEC 10646 which involves many more national
standardization bodies around the world than the Unicode Consortium and its
working groups and liaison members. The time delay is needed by Unicode to
correctly assign and discuss character properties (so an assignment in
ISO/IEC 10646 or Unicode is not noramtive until both entities have balloted
and voted in favor of the inclusion.

As both entities involve different people (Unicode is open to any private
organizations or people willing to join it, unlike ISO/IEC 10646 which
approves its members, with some being involved by their governement as they
could not pay the price of a full Unicode membership), it is a good point
that both entities (public versus private, even if that division is not so
strict) share their point of view about the extension of the repertoire.

I would prefer to work within Unicode, but I can't pay its membership price
in terms of time and participation. And I'm not entitled to join a ISO/IEC
10646 working group with its heavy administrative working methods. In both
cases, I don't have the money and dedicated time to participate to their
meeting around the world...


__
<< ella for Spam Control >> has removed Spam messages and set aside
Newsletters for me
You can use it too - and it's FREE!  http://www.ellaforspam.com
<>

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Philippe Verdy]

Frank Yung-Fong Tang
> As long as a product support UTF-8 and pass the test with MES-1, I can 
> pretty sure that no code in between strip off any non ISO-8859-1 
> characters, regardless they support MES-2 or MES-3.
> 
> Of course, that does not guarantee surrogate characters won't get 
> damanaged, but just as someone believe, it will be <1% of efforts for me 
> to fix it later, right? :)

As MES-1, MES-2 or MES-3 do not use any character out of the BMP, their
support not enough to test compliance and support of surrogates... You can't
assume that adding later a feature that was never tested in a previous
distribution will require <1% work.

The only way to ensure it is to start supporting some character blocks out
of the BMP (for example language tags, or musical notation, or Deseret, or
other special characters in plane 14, notably the extended variation
selectors which should be easy to support and test so that they will not
break the normal rendering of characters not currently known to use them).

I do think that adding at least the correct and fully compliant support for
variation selectors 17 to 256 would be a more definitive proof that they
aren't broken as they do need to be coded by surrogates in UTF-16, and they
do need the 4 bytes encoding in UTF-8. Just adding this small subset of
characters out of the BMP will not require you to implement all scripts of
the BMP. But at least it preserves you from later bad surprises when you'll
see that you apps need a major revision with lots of change spreaded
everywhere in its code, to make it work with non-BMP characters.


__
<< ella for Spam Control >> has removed Spam messages and set aside
Newsletters for me
You can use it too - and it's FREE!  http://www.ellaforspam.com
<>

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Patrick Andries]

-  Message d'origine - 
De: "Philippe Verdy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>



> Peter Lofting [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Do you have references to the German as well as French script
names...and
> any others ?
>
> For French, I could translate them myself, but you'll find normative
French
> names within ISO/IEC 10646 which names all its assigned blocks in the
> published French version.

As I told Peter offline, the scripts names currently not found in Unicode
4.0 should be found in the bilingual ISO 15924 standard (French/English).

P. A.

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Frank Yung-Fong Tang]

As long as a product support UTF-8 and pass the test with MES-1, I can 
pretty sure that no code in between strip off any non ISO-8859-1 
characters, regardless they support MES-2 or MES-3.

Of course, that does not guarantee surrogate characters won't get 
damanaged, but just as someone believe, it will be <1% of efforts for me 
to fix it later, right? :)


Michael Everson wrote:

 > At 15:38 -0800 2003-12-03, Frank Yung-Fong Tang wrote:
 >
 > >I am encouraging QA to test MES-1 with UTF-8 instead of only ISO-8859-1.
 > >I am encouraging product ship with MES-1 support out of the box instead
 > >of ISO-8859-1.
 > >And if QA wrote their test plan by using UTF-8 and MES-1 and product
 > >claim to supprt MES-1, how far it could be away from "even if not
 > >fully implemented and quality assured in the first release."
 >
 > MES-1 is hopelessly archaic. It's ISO 6937. MES-2 would be the only
 > miminum I could recommend for Europe. And it's not good enough
 > either, which is why MES-3 is block based.
 > --
 > Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com
 >

-- 
--
Frank Yung-Fong Tang
ÅÃÅtÃm ÃrÃhÃtÃÃt, IÃtÃrnÃtiÃnÃl DÃvÃlÃpmeÃt, AOL IntÃrÃÃtÃvà 
SÃrviÃes
AIM:yungfongta   mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel:650-937-2913
Yahoo! Msg: frankyungfongtan

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Michael Everson]

At 17:05 -0800 2003-12-03, Frank Yung-Fong Tang wrote:
As long as a product support UTF-8 and pass the test with MES-1, I can
pretty sure that no code in between strip off any non ISO-8859-1
characters, regardless they support MES-2 or MES-3.
Understood. But for font support for Latin, MES-2 is a far better 
minimum than MES-1.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[John Hudson]

At 03:29 PM 12/3/2003, Peter Kirk wrote:

Surely if shaping, presentation form etc information is to be encoded in a 
font or rendering mechanism at all, it must be script-specific not 
language-specific. That is one reason why there are quite a number of 
Persian, Urdu etc variant characters in the Arabic script block - they 
cannot be unified with the otherwise identical Arabic characters because 
they have different shaping behaviour.
Both kinds of information may be necessary, depending on the writing system 
(particular application of a particular script to a particular language). 
Encoding a particular glyph as U+00431 in a font cmap table is 
script-specific information; a glyph substitution lookup that replaces that 
glyph with a different one when the language is Serbian is 
language-specific information.

Note, however, that not everything one may want to happen in a font is 
neatly divisible into script and language. There may be distinct 
typographic traditions in the setting of the same language. Catering for 
these in architectures that are nominally limited to script and language 
distinctions is very tricky.

John Hudson

Tiro Typeworks  www.tiro.com
Vancouver, BC   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Theory set out to produce texts that could not be processed successfully
by the commonsensical assumptions that ordinary language puts into play.
There are texts of theory that resist meaning so powerfully ... that the
very process of failing to comprehend the text is part of what it has to offer
- Lentricchia & Mclaughlin, _Critical terms for literary study_

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Mark E. Shoulson]

On 12/03/03 00:33, Doug Ewell wrote:

If you really care about the fonts and layout of the text you
distribute, well, that's what PDF is for.  If you don't want to use PDF,
but want to ensure that all your glyphs are displayed (possibly as a
nominal "code chart" glyph only), one alternative might be to recommend
the use of SC UniPad, a Unicode plain-text editor which can be
downloaded from .  UniPad includes a glyph for
every Unicode character except Plane 2, and if you are only using it as
a viewer, it is free.
 

For Unix platforms, there's Yudit, a fine Unicode editor, with better 
rendering than a lot of other applications I've seen (Mozilla, for 
example, does a pretty damn good job these days, but Devanagari, last I 
looked, still misplaced the short-i vowel sign.  Yudit does its own 
TrueType rendering and groks anchor-points, so even the qamats in a 
final kaf in Code2000 is raised up nicely).

I have fun playing with Yudit's keymap-creation abilities, which can 
also be used for wholesale file conversion, so I've played with ones 
that translate Michigan-Claremont Hebrew transliteration into Unicode 
(with extras added to make it easier for me to type, since it's easier 
for me to remember than "normal" Hebrew keyboards), Klingon 
transliteration into PUA, and a favorite if longwinded one that lets me 
type "WHITE SMILING FACE" and get â

~mark

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Michael Everson]

At 15:38 -0800 2003-12-03, Frank Yung-Fong Tang wrote:

I am encouraging QA to test MES-1 with UTF-8 instead of only ISO-8859-1.
I am encouraging product ship with MES-1 support out of the box instead
of ISO-8859-1.
And if QA wrote their test plan by using UTF-8 and MES-1 and product
claim to supprt MES-1, how far it could be away from "even if not
fully implemented and quality assured in the first release."
MES-1 is hopelessly archaic. It's ISO 6937. MES-2 would be the only 
miminum I could recommend for Europe. And it's not good enough 
either, which is why MES-3 is block based.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Michael Everson]

At 14:41 -0800 2003-12-03, D. Starner wrote:
0,1. That's all that's needed to encode any script. So why do we have to
include an image, anyway?
So that people know what the basic encoded entity is.

--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Frank Yung-Fong Tang]

As I understand, SIL ALSO do a lot of Language Survey (see 
http://www.ethnologue.com/ ), Language Research (see 
http://www.sil.org/silesr/yearindex.asp?year=2003 ) and Literacy work 
for different national/international organization as services which are 
not religious-oriented (althought it could be religous motivated) tasks.

Edward H. Trager wrote:

 > On Wednesday 2003.12.03 19:59:45 -, Christopher John Fynn wrote:
 > >
 > > > or donate them to a community organization
 > > > like SIL (http://www.sil.org/) or PrimoÅ Peterlin's FreeFont project
 > > > (http://www.nongnu.org/freefont/).
 > >
 > >
 > > Ed, SIL is backed by very wealthy Christian evangelists whose
 > purpose is to
 > > translate the Bible and other Christian material into every
 > language. Depending
 > > on your POV you might consider them to be a  community organization"
 > or as some
 > > kind of religious imperialists.
 >
 > Thanks, Chris, I did not know that.  I recently saw some good
 > publicity about the
 > author of the Gentium font who I believe works for SIL and that's
 > really all I know
 > about them.
 >
 > >
 > >
 > >
 > >  - Chris
 > >
 >

-- 
--
Frank Yung-Fong Tang
ÅÃÅtÃm ÃrÃhÃtÃÃt, IÃtÃrnÃtiÃnÃl DÃvÃlÃpmeÃt, AOL IntÃrÃÃtÃvà 
SÃrviÃes
AIM:yungfongta   mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel:650-937-2913
Yahoo! Msg: frankyungfongtan

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Frank Yung-Fong Tang]

Peter Kirk wrote:

 > On 02/12/2003 16:25, Frank Yung-Fong Tang wrote:
 >
 > >...
 > >"a barrier to proper internationalisation" ?
 > >
 > >My opinion is reverse, I think it is a "strategy to proper
 > >internationalization". Remember, people can always choose to stay with
 > >ISO-8859-1 only or go to UTF-8 with MES-1 support for European market.
 > >UTF-8 with MES-1 support does not mean other characters won't work in
 > >their product, but instead, it mean other charactrers are not Quality
 > >Assuranced in their products.
 > >
 > >
 > Well, Frank, I am surprised that you favour encouraging developers to
 > design their systems with only the European market in mind. Surely it
 > would help with internationalisation for Thailand if the system is
 > designed with support for Thai and other scripts in mind, even if not
 > fully implemented and quality assured in the first release.

No. that is not what I said. See, you still thinking about "developers" 
and "design" and "system". I am talking about "QA", "product", 
"service", "marketing" PLUS the development.

I am encouraging QA to test MES-1 with UTF-8 instead of only ISO-8859-1.
I am encouraging product ship with MES-1 support out of the box instead 
of ISO-8859-1.
And if QA wrote their test plan by using UTF-8 and MES-1 and product 
claim to supprt MES-1, how far it could be away from "even if not
fully implemented and quality assured in the first release."

You are talking about a "developer driven mindset", I am talking about a 
"product driven", "marketing driven", "Quality driven" mindset.

 >
 > >...
 > >You only look at the issue from the developer point of view. But how
 > >about QA? How are you going to QA the whole Unicode? You also need to
 > >look at the issue from an end-user point of view, or the "working out of
 > >box" point of view. How could the end user know what kind of function
 > >they are going to get WITHOUT extra efforts.
 > >
 > >
 > True, I hadn't looked at the QA issue. I suppose there are two ways to
 > go here: one would be to aim at support for the whole of Unicode but
 > only assure support for certain ranges;

in my book "a supporting feature without QA is not a supported feature 
at all". See, you still have this "developer oriented" mind set. No 
"product" should claim they support something without QA.

 > the other is for the QA people
 > to work with third party fonts.
 > QA-ing the whole of Unicode shouldn't be
 > a big problem anyway as most work needs to be done on new features
 > rather than new characters e.g.

For QA engineer to test a software product with a particular script, 
they have to have at least some minimun knowledge about that script. And 
I won't say that is easy. For example, ask yourself, how many scripts 
you feel confortable by youself to Quality Assuranced? (not just test, 
but ASSURANCE)

 > if one script using special feature X is
 > assured to work, a rather quick test should be sufficient to show that
 > every script using feature X works.

hum that sound below the QA standard normal QA engineers is 
targeting. A good Test Plan need to include
Make sure right input cause right output
Make sure wrong input cause error but not rigth output
Make sure all the possible cdoe path got executed.
and more.

 >
 > >If you are a QA engineer who is working on a working out of box product,
 > >how are you going to prepare your test cases? If you are a product
 > >marketing person who is going to write a product specification about a
 > >cell phone which do not allow user to download fonts, how are you going
 > >to spec it out?
 > >
 > >
 > Well, I was thinking of computers rather than brain dead mobile phones.
 > Mobile phones have long allowed downloading of ring tones, so why not
 > downloading of fonts? And there is probably already a significant demand
 > for mobile phones using every script which is in current everyday use,
 > and so mobile phone manufacturers who restrict users to more restrictive
 > subsets are being shortsighted - although I would expect that full BMP
 > support would be adequate for a basic product in this scenario.
 >

Name me a cell phone which can download and accept CJK Han Extension B 
(Unicode Plan 2) today.

If you are building a theory, you can support any unicode code point.
If you are building a technology, you may support any unicode code point.
If you are building a product, you won't be able to support any unicode 
code point with limited time & cost in good enough quality. In that 
case, I rather cut features (how many scripts in Unicode) in exchange of 
quality.


 > >You are assuming a product which is does not need to work "out of box".
 > >If that is the case, you can ALSO think Windows 2000 work for surrogate
 > >since you can install or tweak the register to make it work with
 > >Surrogate. You can ALSO think Windows 95 can support Complex Script
 > >since you can INSTALL Uniscribe on it, right?
 > >
 > >
 > Right. My Windows 2000 supports surrogates

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Peter Kirk]

On 03/12/2003 13:03, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Christopher John Fynn scripsit:

 

There may be a few samples of presentation forms & conjuncts in a proposal -
but I've yet to see a proposal for Indic script that contains a comprehensive
set of all the presentation forms required  to render all text written in that
script.
   

In any case that information is language-specific, not merely script-specific.

 

Surely if shaping, presentation form etc information is to be encoded in 
a font or rendering mechanism at all, it must be script-specific not 
language-specific. That is one reason why there are quite a number of 
Persian, Urdu etc variant characters in the Arabic script block - they 
cannot be unified with the otherwise identical Arabic characters because 
they have different shaping behaviour.

--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
http://www.qaya.org/

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Peter Kirk]

On 03/12/2003 14:46, Edward H. Trager wrote:

On Wednesday 2003.12.03 19:59:45 -, Christopher John Fynn wrote:
 

or donate them to a community organization
like SIL (http://www.sil.org/) or PrimoÅ Peterlin's FreeFont project
(http://www.nongnu.org/freefont/).
 

Ed, SIL is backed by very wealthy Christian evangelists whose purpose is to
translate the Bible and other Christian material into every language. Depending
on your POV you might consider them to be a  community organization" or as some
kind of religious imperialists.
   

Thanks, Chris, I did not know that.  I recently saw some good publicity about the
author of the Gentium font who I believe works for SIL and that's really all I know
about them.
 

I was a member of SIL for ten years but never heard anything about any 
"very wealthy Christian evangelists", or saw any of their wealth. One 
purpose of SIL is to advance literacy in minority languages, generally 
working with governments, universities etc in less developed countries. 
Such literacy is of course closely linked to computer support for these 
languages' alphabets, hence the involvement in Unicode and with 
providing fonts.

--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
http://www.qaya.org/

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Frank Yung-Fong Tang]

come on, take my joke. but that is a perfect example of "language 
specific variant glyph", right?

Michael Everson wrote:

 > At 17:13 -0800 2003-12-02, Frank Yung-Fong Tang wrote:
 > >come on, use "language specific glyph substution" on the last resort
 > >font to show Irish last resort glyph if the language is Irish. I know
 > >OpenType have it. Does AAT support language specific features?
 >
 > You are welcome to lobby Apple to commission such an enormous font.
 > You have, I think, no idea how much work that would be.
 > --
 > Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com
 >

-- 
--
Frank Yung-Fong Tang
ÅÃÅtÃm ÃrÃhÃtÃÃt, IÃtÃrnÃtiÃnÃl DÃvÃlÃpmeÃt, AOL IntÃrÃÃtÃvà 
SÃrviÃes
AIM:yungfongta   mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel:650-937-2913
Yahoo! Msg: frankyungfongtan

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[D. Starner]

John Hudson writes:
> I disagree. What you describe may be desirable, but in no way is it 
> necessary. What is important to document in a proposal is what is necessary 
> to *encode* text, not to display it. 

0,1. That's all that's needed to encode any script. So why do we have to
include an image, anyway?

A lot of the arguments on this list amount to, I have this symbol in my
text, how do I encode it? In any complex script (or simple script being
used in a complex way), this may not be obvious from the list of encoded
entites. If it's not, then there must be some rational way to tell how
it should be encoded, because having multiple (normalized) encodings for 
the same text makes text handling hard.

For example, (bad example warning), if we encoded the English alphabet as
vertical line, upper, middle and lower horizontal lines, half loop and loop,
then the proposal should show us how to represent all the major entities
in English text with this. If people come back saying "this says Q should
be loop + lower horizontal line and we think it should be loop + vertical
line", then there was a problem with the proposal.
-- 
___
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RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Peter Lofting]

Title: RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0
?


At 9:49 PM + 12/3/03, Michael Everson wrote:

(Is this font only available for Mac and
shipped licensed with Mac OS?)


Yes, but I am sure that Apple would
entertain licensing it to other companies.

Yes we are open to this.

Its purpose is to form a widely recognizable fall-back for each
script, so there is no point having different versions floating around
causing confusion, therefore we also make the spec fully available
at 
http://developer.apple.com/fonts/LastResortFont/

Peter

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Michael Everson]

At 08:59 -0800 2003-12-03, D. Starner wrote:

I might be sympathetic if I could go to Everson Typography and buy
these fonts that you don't dare give away, or if you had licensed
them to Apple or Sun or Microsoft. But, as far as I can tell, you
have these fonts sitting on a backup disk in the basement. It wouldn't
hurt you at all to release them in some form, and it would help the
Cherokee (for instance) to actually use Unicode for their language.
I've been busy, typesetting in Irish to pay the rent and trying to 
find time to do the character encoding work which is needed for so 
many scripts. It didn't occur to me that there was much of a market 
for my Gothic and Linear B fonts in the short term.

I did provide Cherokee input Methods for OS X which is shipping the 
very nice Plantagenet Cherokee font.

Perhaps I will do what I can to make some of the more exotic fonts 
available sooner rather than later. There's Everson Mono, of course. 
;-)

How much would you pay for a Linear B font, David? ;-)
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Edward H. Trager]

On Wednesday 2003.12.03 19:59:45 -, Christopher John Fynn wrote:
> 
> > or donate them to a community organization
> > like SIL (http://www.sil.org/) or PrimoÅ Peterlin's FreeFont project
> > (http://www.nongnu.org/freefont/).
> 
> 
> Ed, SIL is backed by very wealthy Christian evangelists whose purpose is to
> translate the Bible and other Christian material into every language. Depending
> on your POV you might consider them to be a  community organization" or as some
> kind of religious imperialists.

Thanks, Chris, I did not know that.  I recently saw some good publicity about the
author of the Gentium font who I believe works for SIL and that's really all I know
about them.

> 
> 
> 
>  - Chris
> 

Re: Fontasmagoria (was: Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?)

[Patrick Andries]

- Message d'origine - 
De: "Kenneth Whistler" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>



> Patric Andries continued:

Okay, okay I'll keep quite (for a whileâ)

> > > On Dec 2, 2003, at 7:35 PM, Patrick Andries wrote:
> > >
> > > > Well, some fonts would be better than none (and they have to be made
> > > > so that
> > > > the Unicode standard be printed).
> > > >
> > >
> > > The Unicode standard doesn't require Unicode to be printed.  A lot of
> > > the fonts used to print the book are Windows symbols fonts, with the
> > > code chart-generating code automatically remapping them as needed.
> >
> > I didn't mean to imply this, but I believe this indexing is a minor
effort
> > when compared to the font drawing aspect and those fonts,
>
> True, but...
>
> A. Many of these fonts are encumbered with highly restricted licenses
> and IP agreements enabling use *only* for publication of the standards
> (Unicode *and* 10646).
>
> B. The management of the fonts for the publication of the standards is
> already a resource-bound task that is somewhat of a QA nightmare and
> which contributes significantly to the time it takes to produce each
> new version of the standard. There are no extra cycles here to devote
> to also trying to repackage and market these fonts for general use,
> *even if* they weren't encumbered by license agreements.

I never meant or said this to be a Unicode consortium project, what I
intended to say is that these basic fonts could not be very expensive for
*someone* to provide : original font designers that supplied it to the
Unicode consortium or â for instance â the OS manufacturers licensing them
from those font designers as more helpful last resort fonts.

P. A.

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Michael Everson]

At 14:01 +0100 2003-12-03, Philippe Verdy wrote:
Michael Everson
 Please stop discussing font design, Philippe, if you wish to
 avoid offence.
Sorry, I did not intend this message to be addressed at you, as you are
certainly a responctable typographer, and even if I know that you designed
the LastResort font glyphs for Apple.
I try to be as responctable as I can. But I was not taking it 
personally. I was suggesting that with regard to the work involved, 
you didn't know what you were talking about. John Hudson said, quite 
rightly: "There is a huge amount of skill, expertise and experience, 
and a *lot* of work" involved in making fonts.

(Is this font only available for Mac and shipped licensed with Mac OS?)
Yes, but I am sure that Apple would entertain licensing it to other companies.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Peter Lofting]

Title: RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0
?


At 10:53 AM + 12/3/03, Michael Everson wrote:

The other good thing could be to include
also the script name in a
typical language using that script natively (for example the
"lastresorthebrew" glyph usezd for the hebrew block should
not only
display "HEBREW" with ASCII letters on the top, but also the
Hebrew
term for "HEBREW")...


You are welcome to draw up a list of all of the "native"
names.

FYI the 132 candidate
translation names are listed below. This does not include 14 Last
Resort glyphs with Latin or technical block names, nor another 90
which use both lines for the block name.

Thaana
Mandaic
Kannada
Cyrillic Sup.
Armenian
Phoenician
Devanagari
Malayalam
Ethiopic
Bengali
Sinhala
Hebrew
Gurmikhi
Thai
Avestan
Arabic
Gujarati
Lao
Ogham
Pahlavi
Oriya
Tibetan
Runic
Basic Greek
Syriac
Tifinagh
Tamil
Myanmar
Tagalog
Cyrillic
Aramaic
Smaritan
Telugu
Georgian
Hanunoo
Buhid
New Tai lu
Siddham
Tagbanwa
Lanna
Lepcha
Khmer
Buginese
Kayah Li
Mongolian
Batak
'Phags Pa
Glagolitic
Cham
Javanese
Tai Le
Meithei
Greek Ext
Coptic
Siloti Nagri
Ethiopic Ext.
Viet Thai
Limbu
Ol
Hiragana
Newari
Katakana
Bopomofo
Old italic
Chakma
Yi Syllables
Gothic
Kanbun
Yi Radicals
Old Permic
Linear A
Deseret
Osmanya
Buthakukye
Nabataean
Byblos
Kaithi
Vai
Pollard
Bassa
Carian
Protoelamite
Rejang
Bamum
shavian
Cyriot
Numidian
Bramhi
Landa
Paucartambo
Cyprominoan
Meroitic
Lydian
Pyu
Modi
Woleai
Iberian
Balti
Elymaic
Balinese
Chalukya
Shorthands
Lycian
Uighur
Soyombo
Chola
Tengwar
Old Turkik
Kharosthi
Ahom
Satavahana
Cirth
Elbasan
Palmyrene
Hatran
Turkestani
Takri
Aiha
Aymara
Tangut
Engsvanyali
Blisssymbols
Kauder
Alpine
Jurchin
N'Ko
Sarati
Kawi
Indus
RongoRongo

See all 236 Last Resort
glyphs for yourself in
http://developer.apple.com/fonts/LastResortFont/LastResortGlyphs5pp.pdf

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Doug Ewell]

Peter Constable  wrote:

> Jill, if MS or any other platform vendor starts to provide fonts for
> music or math symbols in a new version of their software, that will
> constitute added value over the previous version of their software,
> and you'll likely have to pay for it. Maybe that doesn't meet your
> expectations, but AFAIK this has never been a complaint from the
> hundreds of millions of copies of Windows, Mac OS, OS/2, DOS, Linux,
> AIX, CP/M... that have been sold over the past few decades that did
> not provide all these symbols out of the box.

Actually, I've heard lots of complaints -- mostly out of my own mouth --
that Arial Unicode MS isn't shipped with Windows, but only with Office.
It would be nice if we could count on all Windows users having at least
one font (doesn't have to be a really beautiful one) that covers a large
portion of the BMP.  But I've accepted that we can't, and moved on.

-Doug Ewell
 Fullerton, California
 http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Michael Everson]

At 12:51 -0800 2003-12-03, Peter Kirk wrote:

Understood. But in fact TUS contains some quite detailed rules for 
Arabic shaping. I am only asking that there should be similar rules 
for other scripts.
Did you notice that Unicode 4.0 has improved many of the script intros?
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

Fontasmagoria (was: Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?)

[Kenneth Whistler]

Patric Andries continued:

> > On Dec 2, 2003, at 7:35 PM, Patrick Andries wrote:
> >
> > > Well, some fonts would be better than none (and they have to be made
> > > so that
> > > the Unicode standard be printed).
> > >
> >
> > The Unicode standard doesn't require Unicode to be printed.  A lot of
> > the fonts used to print the book are Windows symbols fonts, with the
> > code chart-generating code automatically remapping them as needed.
> 
> I didn't mean to imply this, but I believe this indexing is a minor effort
> when compared to the font drawing aspect and those fonts,

True, but...

A. Many of these fonts are encumbered with highly restricted licenses
and IP agreements enabling use *only* for publication of the standards
(Unicode *and* 10646).

B. The management of the fonts for the publication of the standards is
already a resource-bound task that is somewhat of a QA nightmare and
which contributes significantly to the time it takes to produce each
new version of the standard. There are no extra cycles here to devote
to also trying to repackage and market these fonts for general use,
*even if* they weren't encumbered by license agreements. 

> once remapped and
> even as unpolished or unhinted as they could be, would really be useful to
> users as fallback (or last resort) resources. I believe this could be easy
> for scripts that need no contextual processing. A nice added value.

Well, sure. But people have been wanting the Unicode Consortium to
provide free (or cheap) fonts to support Unicode for, um... *looks
at calendar* ... over a decade now. It has never happened, because
the officers, the editors, the directors, the members, have never
figured out how to assemble the expertise, the resources, and the
time to make the consortium function effectively as a font house,
in addition to its primary role as a character encoding standards
development organization. Besides, it always had the danger of
putting the consortium into competition with typographers who are
trying to make a living designing and selling fonts for support
of Unicode (among other things), and that would not be a good
thing.

If people really want the Unicode Consortium to start releasing
fonts into the public domain for the greater good, the most
effective way to accomplish anything along those lines would be
for people/groups/corporations with such agendas to join the
consortium as voting members to press their case and to bring
the necessary resources to bear to deal with the licensing, IP,
packaging, marketing, and maintenance aspects of such work.
Short of that, it is very unlikely that anything different is
going to happen along these lines than has already happened in
the last ten years of this discussion -- nothing.

More effective, in my opinion, would be to press the owners and
designers of such fonts -- the actual typographers and font
foundaries -- to market their fonts as they see fit and as would
be useful.

> 
> I also agree that having more of the (western if I may be Eurocentric) music
> symbols, maths symbols and even parts of braces like 23AB in standard fonts
> would be a real service to users.

Sure would. I hope the font designers are listening.

--Ken

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[jameskass]

.
Edward H. Trager wrote,

> WHY NOT just *give* away the Linear B, Ogham, Cherokee, and lots 
> ...
>
> However, I would not suggest giving those fonts away to an OS vendor
> like ...

It's hard to sell something you're giving away.

Best regards,

James Kass
.

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Philippe Verdy]

John Jenkins writes:
> On Dec 3, 2003, at 3:53 AM, Michael Everson wrote:
> > At 01:44 +0100 2003-12-03, Philippe Verdy wrote:
> >> Using the official Unicode script name in English is not a problem.
> >> But a OS vendor could as well choose to translate these names in
> >> localized versions of this font if the OS itself is translated.
> >
> > At some expense. You are welcome to lobby Apple to commission a 
> > localized French version of the Last Resort Font.
> 
> Noting, BTW, that localizing the LR font for each of the scripts for 
> which the OS itself is localized is (a) very expensive, and (b) of 
> *really* marginal utility.

I have the same view, Michael seems to think that I will request that
localization to Apple but that was not what I commented here and I
won't need it (and even French users won't care about the English
name that appears on last resort glyphs if shown at large sizes above
66 points on MacOSX).


__
<< ella for Spam Control >> has removed Spam messages and set aside
Newsletters for me
You can use it too - and it's FREE!  http://www.ellaforspam.com
<>

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Michael Everson]

At 12:44 -0800 2003-12-03, John Hudson wrote:
At 04:30 AM 12/3/2003, Peter Kirk wrote:

An adequate proposal for a complex script should surely include a 
proper account of the script behaviour and sample glyphs of 
presentation forms. And so such a proposal should include all that 
is needed for a developer, and is available some time before the 
new script is officially standardised.
I disagree. What you describe may be desirable, but in no way is it 
necessary. What is important to document in a proposal is what is 
necessary to *encode* text, not to display it. Remember that a lot 
of work was done on encoding complex scripts in Unicode before there 
were adequate font and shaping engine technologies in place to 
implement the character/glyph model as envisaged.
John is absolutely right.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[jameskass]

.
Arcane Jill wrote,

(Ah, well, it was apparently in rich text (or something other
than plain text) format, so I guess I can't copy/paste it
into my reply, and now it isn't visible on the screen, so
I will have to do this from memory...)

> ... calligraphic (is that a word?) ...

Yes.

Best regards,

James Kass
.

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[jcowan]

Christopher John Fynn scripsit:

> There may be a few samples of presentation forms & conjuncts in a proposal -
> but I've yet to see a proposal for Indic script that contains a comprehensive
> set of all the presentation forms required  to render all text written in that
> script.

In any case that information is language-specific, not merely script-specific.

-- 
[W]hen I wrote it I was more than a little  John Cowan
febrile with foodpoisoning from an antique carrot   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
that I foolishly ate out of an illjudged faith  www.ccil.org/~cowan
in the benignancy of vegetables.  --And Rosta   www.reutershealth.com

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[John Hudson]

At 04:30 AM 12/3/2003, Peter Kirk wrote:

An adequate proposal for a complex script should surely include a proper 
account of the script behaviour and sample glyphs of presentation forms. 
And so such a proposal should include all that is needed for a developer, 
and is available some time before the new script is officially standardised.
I disagree. What you describe may be desirable, but in no way is it 
necessary. What is important to document in a proposal is what is necessary 
to *encode* text, not to display it. Remember that a lot of work was done 
on encoding complex scripts in Unicode before there were adequate font and 
shaping engine technologies in place to implement the character/glyph model 
as envisaged. Also, for some complex scripts, especially Arabic, how do you 
define what is 'needed for a developer' independent of the particular 
script style, individual typeface design and specific rendering technology? 
What is needed for Tom Milo to render Arabic using his technology is quite 
different from what is needed to render the same text in the same style in 
a typical OpenType implementation.

John Hudson

Tiro Typeworks  www.tiro.com
Vancouver, BC   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Theory set out to produce texts that could not be processed successfully
by the commonsensical assumptions that ordinary language puts into play.
There are texts of theory that resist meaning so powerfully ... that the
very process of failing to comprehend the text is part of what it has to offer
- Lentricchia & Mclaughlin, _Critical terms for literary study_

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[John Hudson]

At 05:56 AM 12/3/2003, Philippe Verdy wrote:

Just visit the impressive resource references collected on:
http://www.nongnu.org/freefont/
...
There's no magic behind fonts. In fact, in a near future, most
Unicode-supported scripts will be easily accessible to users,
because there will be large collections of OpenType fonts
supporting them and created with open-sourced licenses.
Well, so far they have a Courier clone, a Times clone and a Helvetica 
clone, all based on old URW data. And typical of this sort of project, it 
is easy to spot the freshly made glyphs that have been added by the 
well-meaning amateurs, which even when copied from existing typefaces (e.g. 
the Hebrew in the 'Free Sans' font: an obvious copy of Ismar David's 
eponymous classic) are badly drawn, crudely digitised and technically 
non-conformant.

You're right about one thing though: there is no magic behind fonts. There 
is a huge amount of skill, expertise and experience, and a *lot* of work.

John Hudson

Tiro Typeworks  www.tiro.com
Vancouver, BC   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Theory set out to produce texts that could not be processed successfully
by the commonsensical assumptions that ordinary language puts into play.
There are texts of theory that resist meaning so powerfully ... that the
very process of failing to comprehend the text is part of what it has to offer
- Lentricchia & Mclaughlin, _Critical terms for literary study_

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[John Hudson]

At 08:11 AM 12/3/2003, Patrick Andries wrote:

> Noting, BTW, that localizing the LR font for each of the scripts for
> which the OS itself is localized is (a) very expensive,
I'm not so sure this cannot be automated (Python + Fontlab) and the cost be
brought really down.
Oh yeah. I wasn't saying this was a sensible or efficient idea, only that a 
large part of it seemed plausible, given what I've seen my more 
Python-savvy colleagues doing with FontLab and, even more impressively, 
RoboFab (http://www.letterror.com/code/robofab/)

JH 

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Peter Kirk]

On 03/12/2003 11:52, Christopher John Fynn wrote:

An adequate proposal for a complex script should surely include a proper
account of the script behaviour and sample glyphs of presentation forms.
And so such a proposal should include all that is needed for a
developer, and is available some time before the new script is
officially standardised.
   

There may be a few samples of presentation forms & conjuncts in a proposal -
but I've yet to see a proposal for Indic script that contains a comprehensive
set of all the presentation forms required  to render all text written in that
script.
 

OK. Proposals don't include such a proper account, but I still consider 
that they should.

Character encoding proposals for complex scripts do not contain sufficient
information for a developer to write rules for a layout engine for the script
or enough information for a type designer to develop a font for the script.
If such information were a requirement I suspect a number of scripts that have
already been encoded in the standard would not be there yet.
 

And perhaps they shouldn't have been there yet, because there are still 
so many open questions about them and because some properties have been 
frozen incorrectly. Witness the questions being asked about Oriya. 
Witness the 11,172 Korean characters which (according to Jungshik) 
"should never have been encoded" - that's 17% of the BMP wasted, more 
than that if we subtract non-characters, surrogates and PUA. Then there 
is Hebrew... These are all things which should have been sorted out and 
written up properly when the scripts were first proposed, and then 
clearly specified in the standard, or standard annexes.

--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
http://www.qaya.org/

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Peter Kirk]

On 03/12/2003 06:18, John Cowan wrote:

Peter Kirk scripsit:

 

Surely it 
would help with internationalisation for Thailand if the system is 
designed with support for Thai and other scripts in mind, even if not 
fully implemented and quality assured in the first release.
   

Surely it would.  But given the high costs of supporting Thai properly
(it requires keeping a Thai dictionary around just to do line breaking),
it's not an unreasonable business decision to say that the Thai-language
market is simply not worth supporting for some applications.
And before you say "put it in the OS", not all computing platforms are
bloat-tolerant desktops.
 

Well, I was talking about the OS not applications. But then I was 
thinking in terms of desktops which already tolerate lots of bloat. If 
you are talking about mobile phones etc, you have to weigh up the cost 
factors against the loss of the rather large Thai market. If you want to 
penetrate the  Thai market with your second generation, you still design 
the first generation with Thai support but in a way that you can omit 
the Thai dictionary as well as the font from the first release for 
Europe and America only.

--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
http://www.qaya.org/

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Peter Kirk]

On 03/12/2003 12:44, John Hudson wrote:

At 04:30 AM 12/3/2003, Peter Kirk wrote:

An adequate proposal for a complex script should surely include a 
proper account of the script behaviour and sample glyphs of 
presentation forms. And so such a proposal should include all that is 
needed for a developer, and is available some time before the new 
script is officially standardised.


I disagree. What you describe may be desirable, but in no way is it 
necessary. What is important to document in a proposal is what is 
necessary to *encode* text, not to display it. Remember that a lot of 
work was done on encoding complex scripts in Unicode before there were 
adequate font and shaping engine technologies in place to implement 
the character/glyph model as envisaged. Also, for some complex 
scripts, especially Arabic, how do you define what is 'needed for a 
developer' independent of the particular script style, individual 
typeface design and specific rendering technology? What is needed for 
Tom Milo to render Arabic using his technology is quite different from 
what is needed to render the same text in the same style in a typical 
OpenType implementation.


Understood. But in fact TUS contains some quite detailed rules for 
Arabic shaping. I am only asking that there should be similar rules for 
other scripts.

As for different script styles, there may of course be variants but each 
script has a typical variant, and any major deviations from that should 
be considered a separate script. I am not suggesting normative rules, 
just implementation recommendations.

--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
http://www.qaya.org/

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Michael Everson]

At 12:00 -0500 2003-12-03, Language Analysis Systems, Inc. Unicode 
list reader wrote:
 > In short, in any given locale, one should get the symbols of that 
locale, out of the box. (And in my locale, that should include math 
and 
 > music symbols). 

I question this.

On the one hand, I agree with you.  As a musician, it's always 
bugged me that I can't say "Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 in E-Flat 
Major" without either spelling out "-Flat" or using a lowercase b as 
a kludge (at least I can use the pound sign to say "Gershwin's 
Prelude No. 2 in C# Minor").
OS X ships all those in the Apple Symbols font, and they are also in 
a number of the Japanese and Korean fonts which ship with the OS.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Michael Everson]

At 08:11 -0800 2003-12-03, Patrick Andries wrote:
- Message d'origine -
De: "John Jenkins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
 Noting, BTW, that localizing the LR font for each of the scripts for
 which the OS itself is localized is (a) very expensive,
I'm not so sure this cannot be automated (Python + Fontlab) and the cost be
brought really down.
What, FontLab is supposed to magically find the text outline glyphs 
in the font and delete them and replace them by equivalent French 
translations, spacing, abbreviating, and centring them appropriately 
and accurately?

I find that hard to credit.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Curtis Clark]

on 2003-12-03 11:28 Edward H. Trager wrote:

WHY NOT just *give* away the Linear B, Ogham, 
I give away Linear B. It's an incomplete set, and has not been vetted by 
experts, as has Michael's. It's worth what you pay for it.

I and Michael both give away Ogham. His has the glyphs in the proper 
Unicode slots; mine is a font hack (I have the Unicode version sitting 
on my hard disk, tapping its foot waiting to get out).

And making fonts isn't my day job. With Michael, you get scholarly 
expertise, professional care, and someone to complain to when things are 
wrong. With my fonts, you get what you pay for.

I'd be happy, short-term, if Michael gave away more stuff. But until he 
becomes independently wealthy, we all lose long-term if he decides he 
can no longer afford to devote the time to script encoding.

--
Curtis Clark  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
Mockingbird Font Works  http://www.mockfont.com/

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Christopher John Fynn]

> An adequate proposal for a complex script should surely include a proper
> account of the script behaviour and sample glyphs of presentation forms.
> And so such a proposal should include all that is needed for a
> developer, and is available some time before the new script is
> officially standardised.

There may be a few samples of presentation forms & conjuncts in a proposal -
but I've yet to see a proposal for Indic script that contains a comprehensive
set of all the presentation forms required  to render all text written in that
script.

Character encoding proposals for complex scripts do not contain sufficient
information for a developer to write rules for a layout engine for the script
or enough information for a type designer to develop a font for the script.

If such information were a requirement I suspect a number of scripts that have
already been encoded in the standard would not be there yet.


> >If you code chart type glyphs are enough for you then on Windows if you have
MS
> >Office there is always Arial Unicode.

> Except that this font is stuck at Unicode 2.something. Or is there any
> sign of an update?

The version I have on my machine dated 03 June 1999 does contain characters
added with Unicode 3.0 though I haven't checked to see if all characters added
with Unicode 3.0 are all there.  I also haven't looked at later versions,
including the one shipped with Office 2003 - maybe it has been updated.

- Chris

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Edward H. Trager]

On Wednesday 2003.12.03 08:59:43 -0800, D. Starner wrote:
> Michael Everson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
> 
> > I (for instance) provided Gothic and Linear B and Ogham and lots and 
> > lots of other fonts to print the standard. You are not suggesting 
> > that I (for instance) should *give* those fonts to Apple and Sun and 
> > Microsoft and Linux and any and everyone else so that they can add 
> > such excellent value to their operating systems, are you?
> 
> And I'm sure he's not suggesting that a library just give out books,
> either, is he?
> 
> I might be sympathetic if I could go to Everson Typography and buy
> these fonts that you don't dare give away, or if you had licensed
> them to Apple or Sun or Microsoft. But, as far as I can tell, you
> have these fonts sitting on a backup disk in the basement. It wouldn't
> hurt you at all to release them in some form, and it would help the
> Cherokee (for instance) to actually use Unicode for their language.
> 

WHY NOT just *give* away the Linear B, Ogham, Cherokee, and lots and 
lots of other fonts that are of interest to specialized user communities?  
My hunch is that Everson Typography will never make any money from a 
Linear B or Cherokee font anyway.  The markets are just too small.  
Giving away those fonts would benefit those communities while simultaneously
bolstering the reputation of the font vendor as a charitable corporate citizen.
In fact, I'm sure marketing types could convince us that giving away some
stuff for free is good for business and later generates sales of other stuff
to all of those happy customers.

However, I would not suggest giving those fonts away to an OS vendor like 
Microsoft or Apple or Sun or Redhat.  You could either distribute them
from your own web site under an appropriate license (i.e., one granting 
individuals free non-commercial use), or donate them to a community organization 
like SIL (http://www.sil.org/) or PrimoÅ Peterlin's FreeFont project 
(http://www.nongnu.org/freefont/).

Just my two cents.

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Curtis Clark]

on 2003-12-03 02:09 Arcane Jill wrote:

I don't believe that anyone could rightly argue that, for 
instance, musical symbols were "esoteric". They're a standard part of my 
culture. And yet, I still can't put a treble clef in my document using 
the standard Windows fonts, and nor can I put it on a web site and 
believe that it will be viewed correctly by most western viewers. 
Um, as an off-and-on musician, I tend to expect a treble clef on a 
staff, and I don't really expect my OS to handle musical notation. I 
suppose if I wanted to say "here is what a treble clef looks like" on a 
web site, I would have to use a graphic. I'd have to do the same thing 
to show what a rose looks like. (And if I wanted to demonstrate its 
smell, I'd be out of luck.)

By 
exactly the same reasoning, I expect all the math symbols to be there 
too, including mathematical alphanumeric symbols. This is not a strange 
or exotic requirement, it's just a part of living in this western 
culture and wanting to use they symbols of my culture. 
The bulk of math alphanumerics can be represented with markup, using 
standard fonts. Sure, it's no good for interchange, but viewers of a web 
page can *see* italic "a" (assuming they can see) with a simple a.

--
Curtis Clark  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
Mockingbird Font Works  http://www.mockfont.com/

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Deborah Goldsmith]

Of far more value than Apple employees pressuring Apple's management to 
cough up the money for new fonts would be Apple's *customers* telling 
Apple's management they want to see such fonts.

Deborah Goldsmith
Manager, Fonts / Unicode liaison
Apple Computer, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Dec 3, 2003, at 7:55 AM, John Jenkins wrote:

Personally, I'd rather pressure Apple's management to pay Michael for 
new fonts for additional scripts than to pay him to draw new localized 
versions of the LR font.

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Michael Everson]

At 18:59 +0100 2003-12-03, Philippe Verdy wrote:

Michael seems to think that I will request that localization to Apple
No, I don't.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Edward H. Trager]

On Wednesday 2003.12.03 08:59:43 -0800, D. Starner wrote:
> Michael Everson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
> 
> > I (for instance) provided Gothic and Linear B and Ogham and lots and 
> > lots of other fonts to print the standard. You are not suggesting 
> > that I (for instance) should *give* those fonts to Apple and Sun and 
> > Microsoft and Linux and any and everyone else so that they can add 
> > such excellent value to their operating systems, are you?
> 
> And I'm sure he's not suggesting that a library just give out books,
> either, is he?
> 
> I might be sympathetic if I could go to Everson Typography and buy
> these fonts that you don't dare give away, or if you had licensed
> them to Apple or Sun or Microsoft. But, as far as I can tell, you
> have these fonts sitting on a backup disk in the basement. It wouldn't
> hurt you at all to release them in some form, and it would help the
> Cherokee (for instance) to actually use Unicode for their language.
> 

WHY NOT just *give* away the Linear B, Ogham, Cherokee, and lots and 
lots of other fonts that are of interest to specialized user communities?  
My hunch is that Everson Typography will never make any money from a 
Linear B or Cherokee font anyway.  The markets are just too small.  
Giving away those fonts would benefit those communities while simultaneously
bolstering the reputation of the font vendor as a charitable corporate citizen.
In fact, I'm sure marketing types could convince us that giving away some
stuff for free is good for business and later generates sales of other stuff
to all of those happy customers.

However, I would not suggest giving those fonts away to an OS vendor like 
Microsoft or Apple or Sun or Redhat.  You could either distribute them
from your own web site under an appropriate license (i.e., one granting 
individuals free non-commercial use), or donate them to a community organization 
like SIL (http://www.sil.org/) or PrimoÅ Peterlin's FreeFont project 
(http://www.nongnu.org/freefont/).

Just my two cents -- Ed Trager

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Edward H. Trager]

On Wednesday 2003.12.03 08:59:43 -0800, D. Starner wrote:
> Michael Everson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
> 
> > I (for instance) provided Gothic and Linear B and Ogham and lots and 
> > lots of other fonts to print the standard. You are not suggesting 
> > that I (for instance) should *give* those fonts to Apple and Sun and 
> > Microsoft and Linux and any and everyone else so that they can add 
> > such excellent value to their operating systems, are you?
> 
> And I'm sure he's not suggesting that a library just give out books,
> either, is he?
> 
> I might be sympathetic if I could go to Everson Typography and buy
> these fonts that you don't dare give away, or if you had licensed
> them to Apple or Sun or Microsoft. But, as far as I can tell, you
> have these fonts sitting on a backup disk in the basement. It wouldn't
> hurt you at all to release them in some form, and it would help the
> Cherokee (for instance) to actually use Unicode for their language.
> 

WHY NOT just *give* away the Linear B, Ogham, Cherokee, and lots and 
lots of other fonts that are of interest to specialized user communities?  
My hunch is that Everson Typography will never make any money from a 
Linear B or Cherokee font anyway.  The markets are just too small.  
Giving away those fonts would benefit those communities while simultaneously
bolstering the reputation of the font vendor as a charitable corporate citizen.
In fact, I'm sure marketing types could convince us that giving away some
stuff for free is good for business and later generates sales of other stuff
to all of those happy customers.

However, I would not suggest giving those fonts away to an OS vendor like 
Microsoft or Apple or Sun or Redhat.  You could either distribute them
from your own web site under an appropriate license (i.e., one granting 
individuals free non-commercial use), or donate them to a community organization 
like SIL (http://www.sil.org/) or PrimoÅ Peterlin's FreeFont project 
(http://www.nongnu.org/freefont/).

Just my two cents.

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Deborah Goldsmith]

Actually, Mac OS X 10.3 Panther includes a set of Cherokee fonts.

Deborah Goldsmith
Manager, Fonts / Unicode liaison
Apple Computer, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Dec 3, 2003, at 8:59 AM, D. Starner wrote:

It wouldn't
hurt you at all to release them in some form, and it would help the
Cherokee (for instance) to actually use Unicode for their language.

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Patrick Andries]

- Message d'origine - 
De: "John Jenkins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


>
> On Dec 2, 2003, at 7:35 PM, Patrick Andries wrote:
>
> > Well, some fonts would be better than none (and they have to be made
> > so that
> > the Unicode standard be printed).
> >
>
> The Unicode standard doesn't require Unicode to be printed.  A lot of
> the fonts used to print the book are Windows symbols fonts, with the
> code chart-generating code automatically remapping them as needed.

I didn't mean to imply this, but I believe this indexing is a minor effort
when compared to the font drawing aspect and those fonts, once remapped and
even as unpolished or unhinted as they could be, would really be useful to
users as fallback (or last resort) resources. I believe this could be easy
for scripts that need no contextual processing. A nice added value.

I also agree that having more of the (western if I may be Eurocentric) music
symbols, maths symbols and even parts of braces like 23AB in standard fonts
would be a real service to users.

P. A.

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Language Analysis Systems, Inc. Unicode list reader]

Title: Message



> In short, in any given locale, one should get the 
symbols of that locale, out of the box. (And in my locale, that should include 
math and 
> music symbols). 
 
I question 
this.
 
On the one hand, I 
agree with you.  As a musician, it's always bugged me that I can't say 
"Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 in E-Flat Major" without either spelling out "-Flat" 
or using a lowercase b as a kludge (at least I can use the pound sign to say 
"Gershwin's Prelude No. 2 in C# Minor").
 
On the other hand, 
I'm probably not going to be using U+1D1A6 MUSICAL SYMBOL HAUPTSTIMME or U+1D197 
MUSICAL SYMBOL TURN unless I'm a musician writing about music for an audience of 
musicians.  Symbols like the cut-time mark or the trable clef or the notes 
themselves are somewhere in the middle.
 
Same thing with 
mathematical symbols.  I'd be pretty upset if the plus sign wasn't 
generally available, but I'm probably not going to be using U+27E0 LOZENGE 
DIVIDED BY HORIZONTAL RULE unless I'm writing for a really specialized 
audience.  Things like the not-equal sign or the set operators are 
somewhere in the middle.  The math alphanumerics may likewise be somewhere 
in the middle.
 
So the question is 
where you draw the line.   It's clear 
that with almost any set of signs and symbols there's a subset that's in general 
common use and that most people know about and may want to use in their 
writing.  These should be implemented in most operating systems and, for 
the most part, they are.  But there's a much larger set that's really only 
used within fairly tight communities; it's fair for these communities to pay a 
little extra to get specialized software and/or fonts that fill their 
needs.  Especially since math and music (at least) generally require 
special layout beyond what normal word processors can do.
 
--Rich 
Gillam
  Language 
Analysis Systems, Inc.
 

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Peter Constable]

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Behalf
> Of John Cowan


> It would probably help if James got a PayPal account.

He has a PayPal account. If you open the zip file from his site, there's
an HTML file inside with info on how to pay him, including using PayPal.


Peter
 
Peter Constable
Globalization Infrastructure and Font Technologies
Microsoft Windows Division

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Peter Constable]

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Arcane Jill

> It is my opinion that, regardless of one's culture, the symbols you
use 
>every day should be the ones which come supplied out of the box, 
>and the ones which would be considered rare or esoteric in one's own 
>culture should be the ones for which you should be expected to pay
extra.

>In short, in any given locale, one should get the symbols of that
locale, 
>out of the box. (And in my locale, that should include math and music 
>symbols).

Jill, if MS or any other platform vendor starts to provide fonts for
music or math symbols in a new version of their software, that will
constitute added value over the previous version of their software, and
you'll likely have to pay for it. Maybe that doesn't meet your
expectations, but AFAIK this has never been a complaint from the
hundreds of millions of copies of Windows, Mac OS, OS/2, DOS, Linux,
AIX, CP/M... that have been sold over the past few decades that did not
provide all these symbols out of the box.



Peter
 
Peter Constable
Globalization Infrastructure and Font Technologies
Microsoft Windows Division

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[D. Starner]

Michael Everson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes

> I (for instance) provided Gothic and Linear B and Ogham and lots and 
> lots of other fonts to print the standard. You are not suggesting 
> that I (for instance) should *give* those fonts to Apple and Sun and 
> Microsoft and Linux and any and everyone else so that they can add 
> such excellent value to their operating systems, are you?

And I'm sure he's not suggesting that a library just give out books,
either, is he?

I might be sympathetic if I could go to Everson Typography and buy
these fonts that you don't dare give away, or if you had licensed
them to Apple or Sun or Microsoft. But, as far as I can tell, you
have these fonts sitting on a backup disk in the basement. It wouldn't
hurt you at all to release them in some form, and it would help the
Cherokee (for instance) to actually use Unicode for their language.

-- 
___
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Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Christopher John Fynn]

Arcane Jill wrote:

<< In short, in any given locale, one should get the symbols of that locale,
out of the box. (And in my locale, that should include math and music symbols).
My apologies if that was not clear, but rest assured I absolutely am not
"ethnocentric". I was merely stating what I think is not an unreasonable user
expectation for anyone, regardless of culture.>>

Well in my given locale (London UK) Bengali, Urdu, Gujarati, Punjabi and many
other languages are common - in some areas of the city more common than
English. They are definitely part of the local culture. Certainly there are
more people using these languages here than there are writing music notation or
complex mathematical formula.  I'd be very happy if all software sold here
supported all these languages "out of the box" - then we could think about
looking after the composers and mathemeticians.

- Chris

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Stefan Persson]

John Jenkins wrote:
The Unicode standard doesn't require Unicode to be printed.  A lot of 
the fonts used to print the book are Windows symbols fonts, with the 
code chart-generating code automatically remapping them as needed.
No matter what code points the characters are mapped to, glyphs for all 
characters are required for printing that book.

Stefan

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Patrick Andries]

- Message d'origine - 
De: "John Jenkins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> Noting, BTW, that localizing the LR font for each of the scripts for
> which the OS itself is localized is (a) very expensive,

I'm not so sure this cannot be automated (Python + Fontlab) and the cost be
brought really down.

>and (b) of
> *really* marginal utility.

True, especially that you really need very good eyes to notice them in
English.

P. A.

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[John Jenkins]

On Dec 3, 2003, at 3:53 AM, Michael Everson wrote:

At 01:44 +0100 2003-12-03, Philippe Verdy wrote:
Using the official Unicode script name in English is not a problem.
But a OS vendor could as well choose to translate these names in
localized versions of this font if the OS itself is translated.
At some expense. You are welcome to lobby Apple to commission a 
localized French version of the Last Resort Font.

Noting, BTW, that localizing the LR font for each of the scripts for 
which the OS itself is localized is (a) very expensive, and (b) of 
*really* marginal utility.

Personally, I'd rather pressure Apple's management to pay Michael for 
new fonts for additional scripts than to pay him to draw new localized 
versions of the LR font.


John H. Jenkins
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://homepage..mac.com/jhjenkins/

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[John Jenkins]

On Dec 2, 2003, at 7:35 PM, Patrick Andries wrote:

Well, some fonts would be better than none (and they have to be made 
so that
the Unicode standard be printed).

The Unicode standard doesn't require Unicode to be printed.  A lot of 
the fonts used to print the book are Windows symbols fonts, with the 
code chart-generating code automatically remapping them as needed.


John H. Jenkins
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://homepage..mac.com/jhjenkins/

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[John Jenkins]

On Dec 2, 2003, at 6:13 PM, Frank Yung-Fong Tang wrote:

come on, use "language specific glyph substution" on the last resort
font to show Irish last resort glyph if the language is Irish. I know
OpenType have it. Does AAT support language specific features?
No.


John H. Jenkins
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://homepage..mac.com/jhjenkins/

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[John Cowan]

Peter Kirk scripsit:

> Surely it 
> would help with internationalisation for Thailand if the system is 
> designed with support for Thai and other scripts in mind, even if not 
> fully implemented and quality assured in the first release.

Surely it would.  But given the high costs of supporting Thai properly
(it requires keeping a Thai dictionary around just to do line breaking),
it's not an unreasonable business decision to say that the Thai-language
market is simply not worth supporting for some applications.

And before you say "put it in the OS", not all computing platforms are
bloat-tolerant desktops.

-- 
Verbogeny is one of the pleasurettesJohn Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
of a creatific thinkerizer. http://www.reutershealth.com
   -- Peter da Silvahttp://www.ccil.org/~cowan

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[John Cowan]

Doug Ewell scripsit:

> I don't remember the terms of use for Gentium, 

No charge for use, freely redistributable in the original packaging,
can't be bundled with an application, no changes allowed.

> (Gee, I should probably pay James some time, shouldn't I?)

Yes.  I think we should have an International Pay James Kass Day,
whereby we send out word to all the specialized mailing lists we
belong to where Code2000 users might be lurking, and urge them
to send in their five simeolons.

It would probably help if James got a PayPal account.

-- 
And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening
beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from
inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding
and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic
tenebrous ultimate gods --  the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul
is Nyarlathotep. (Lovecraft) John Cowan|[EMAIL PROTECTED]|ccil.org/~cowan

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Philippe Verdy]

> Using script languages (inclusing Korn Shell or JavaScript) to 
> generate a font is not ridiculous for me, as it helps maintaining 
> the font design consistently without forgetting cases. These 
> scripts are part of the manual design, but they don't necessarily 
> need drawing abilities (however it requires knowledge of the data 
> tables needed to create a fully functional font). You don't need 
> to publish these scripts, but they are certainly good tools that 
> a typographer could ask to a programmer.

I know it may offence Michael Everson but there are many 
open-source projects aimed at producing free fonts for all 
scripts available in Unicode/ISO/IEC 10646.

Just visit the impressive resource references collected on:
http://www.nongnu.org/freefont/

Don't forget PfaEdit to edit glyph outlines, and the referenced
font tools.

Now font design is open to many hackers that have some ability
in a particular design focus. You don't need to master all 
font technologies as fonts are being now developed with 
small subprojects. Glyphs are only a part of what a font can 
support. Those interested in hinting glyphs, or maintaining
font design integrity when new glyphs are added can now 
collaborate with their own skills.

There's no magic behind fonts. In fact, in a near future, most
Unicode-supported scripts will be easily accessible to users,
because there will be large collections of OpenType fonts
supporting them and created with open-sourced licenses.

So even if an OS still does not provide support for some scripts, 
the OS should be prepared to accept all Unicode scripts with all 
fonts. These OS or software vendors may help those open-source 
projects to enhance their interoperability with foreign scripts, 
and provide in their distribution the best collected open-sourced 
fonts.


__
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RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Philippe Verdy]

 -Message d'origine-
De :Philippe Verdy [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Envoye :mercredi 3 decembre 2003 14:17
A : Michael Everson
Cc :[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Objet : RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

Michael Everson writes:
> John Hudson wrote:
> > Michael Everson wrote:
> > >Philippe Verdy wrote:
> > > > Such a font seems easy to create automatically by using the 
> > > > basic glyphs of a base font containing the ASCII letters and 
> > > > digits, and a source text file giving the name and range of 
> > > > Unicode code point blocks, as well as a representative 
> > > > character or string.
> > >
> > > You don't know much about drawing fonts, evidently.
> >
> >To be fair to Philippe, what he suggests isn't too far beyond what 
> >is currently possible with the latest generation of 
> >Python-scriptable font tools.
> 
> If you say so. I find that I cannot imagine how I would have drawn 
> the glyphs by some automated process.

Why that? Couldn't most of the LastResort glyphs be generated in a 
a SVG-like vector format, using glyphs found in other fonts, plus 
very few specific glyphs that need handdrawing ?

It seems clear to me that most of these glyphs are composed from
other glyphs that could have been borrowed from other fonts. This
allows then to generate the needed collection of glyphs, assigned
a name formed automatically with the Unicode block name, before 
compiling them in a TrueType file where the cmap will also be
script-generated from the UCD properties.

So the effective set of SVG glyph designs that need to be manually 
created seems small for me: you need two rounded boxes to create 
the border, and a few specific variants for the internal area of 
the glyph used to represent non-characters.

Using script languages (inclusing Korn Shell or JavaScript) to 
generate a font is not ridiculous for me, as it helps maintaining 
the font design consistently without forgetting cases. These 
scripts are part of the manual design, but they don't necessarily 
need drawing abilities (however it requires knowledge of the data 
tables needed to create a fully functional font). You don't need 
to publish these scripts, but they are certainly good tools that 
a typographer could ask to a programmer.


__
<< ella for Spam Control >> has removed Spam messages and set aside
Newsletters for me
You can use it too - and it's FREE!  http://www.ellaforspam.com

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<>

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Philippe Verdy]

Michael Everson writes:
> John Hudson wrote:
> > Michael Everson wrote:
> > >Philippe Verdy wrote:
> > > > Such a font seems easy to create automatically by using the 
> > > > basic glyphs of a base font containing the ASCII letters and 
> > > > digits, and a source text file giving the name and range of 
> > > > Unicode code point blocks, as well as a representative 
> > > > character or string.
> > >
> > > You don't know much about drawing fonts, evidently.
> >
> >To be fair to Philippe, what he suggests isn't too far beyond what 
> >is currently possible with the latest generation of 
> >Python-scriptable font tools.
> 
> If you say so. I find that I cannot imagine how I would have drawn 
> the glyphs by some automated process.

Why that? Couldn't most of the LastResort glyphs be generated in a 
a SVG-like vector format, using glyphs found in other fonts, plus 
very few specific glyphs that need handdrawing ?

It seems clear to me that most of these glyphs are composed from
other glyphs that could have been borrowed from other fonts. This
allows then to generate the needed collection of glyphs, assigned
a name formed automatically with the Unicode block name, before 
compiling them in a TrueType file where the cmap will also be
script-generated from the UCD properties.

So the effective set of SVG glyph designs that need to be manually 
created seems small for me: you need two rounded boxes to create 
the border, and a few specific variants for the internal area of 
the glyph used to represent non-characters.

Using script languages (inclusing Korn Shell or JavaScript) to 
generate a font is not ridiculous for me, as it helps maintaining 
the font design consistently without forgetting cases. These 
scripts are part of the manual design, but they don't necessarily 
need drawing abilities (however it requires knowledge of the data 
tables needed to create a fully functional font). You don't need 
to publish these scripts, but they are certainly good tools that 
a typographer could ask to a programmer.


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Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[John Cowan]

Arcane Jill scripsit:
> 
> Sigh. What it is to be constantly misunderstood.

And you're just a soul whose intentions are good, too.

-- 
John Cowan[EMAIL PROTECTED]
At times of peril or dubitation,  http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Perform swift circular ambulation,http://www.reutershealth.com
With loud and high-pitched ululation.

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Philippe Verdy]

Michael Everson
> Please stop discussing font design, Philippe, if you wish to 
> avoid offence.

Sorry, I did not intend this message to be addressed at you, as you are
certainly a responctable typographer, and even if I know that you designed
the LastResort font glyphs for Apple. (Is this font only available for Mac
and shipped licensed with Mac OS?). And was not a personnal offence against
someone.

Well, I don't know if the LastResort font can be used on other systems like
Windows, the same way as on the Mac as a last resort font for missing
glyphs, as I did not see where in Windows one could specify a ordered stack
of prefered fonts for a particular script, as the current Windows/IE GUI
only allows specifying 1 font per script.

My opinion is that Windows (and even MacOSX or other GUIs) could be even
more user-friendly, by allowing creating such stack of preferred fonts per
script, or at least a single ordered stack of fonts for characters not found
in the unique font specified for each script, this stack acting as the
equivalent of a "LastResort" virtual font.


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Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Peter Kirk]

On 02/12/2003 18:41, Christopher John Fynn wrote:

"Patrick Andries" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

 

Well, some fonts would be better than none
(and they have to be made so that
the Unicode standard be printed).
   

In fact they have to be made before the character can even be proposed.

In the case of complex scripts, a font sufficient to print a code chart is
nowhere near adequate  to render that script properly.
 

An adequate proposal for a complex script should surely include a proper 
account of the script behaviour and sample glyphs of presentation forms. 
And so such a proposal should include all that is needed for a 
developer, and is available some time before the new script is 
officially standardised.

If you code chart type glyphs are enough for you then on Windows if you have MS
Office there is always Arial Unicode.
 

Except that this font is stuck at Unicode 2.something. Or is there any 
sign of an update?

--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
http://www.qaya.org/

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Michael Everson]

At 10:09 + 2003-12-03, Arcane Jill wrote:

I DO expect my own language, and also the symbols I encounter every 
day in my culture, to be available in some form, on an OS bought in 
my own country.
When you own your own country and can make those market requirements 
clear to the vendors, they will take more notice.

I don't believe that anyone could rightly argue that, for instance, 
musical symbols were "esoteric". They're a standard part of my 
culture.
And you think they are more important than full Latin or Cyrillic 
support? On my radio interview the other week one of the callers was 
asking about support for Sami. There are many people still unable to 
write anything beyond Latin 1. That's a lot worse than your problem 
with the treble clef. You can get a treble clef glyph ANYWHERE if you 
need one. (You are right though about being able to display it own 
web sites. Perhaps you will appreciate my interest in encoding the 
LITTER DUDE.)

This should be as straightforward as putting these letters into this email.
And it will be, in time.

By exactly the same reasoning, I expect all the math symbols to be 
there too, including mathematical alphanumeric symbols. This is not 
a strange or exotic requirement, it's just a part of living in this 
western culture and wanting to use they symbols of my culture. All 
these arguments about how I don't really need Telugu or whatever are 
probably true, but, come on guys, there are symbols we do use, 
frequently, at least on paper, that we can't use on the web. That 
has got to be wrong.
I think some of what you are saying here is really ethnocentric and a 
bit offensive. There are 69 million speakers of Telugu. I don't think 
your need for math symbols outweighs their need to send basic e-mail 
and do online banking. And you can get math software for your 
platform if you really need it. Mathemeticians do.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

Re: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Peter Kirk]

On 02/12/2003 16:25, Frank Yung-Fong Tang wrote:

...
"a barrier to proper internationalisation" ?
My opinion is reverse, I think it is a "strategy to proper 
internationalization". Remember, people can always choose to stay with 
ISO-8859-1 only or go to UTF-8 with MES-1 support for European market. 
UTF-8 with MES-1 support does not mean other characters won't work in 
their product, but instead, it mean other charactrers are not Quality 
Assuranced in their products.
 

Well, Frank, I am surprised that you favour encouraging developers to 
design their systems with only the European market in mind. Surely it 
would help with internationalisation for Thailand if the system is 
designed with support for Thai and other scripts in mind, even if not 
fully implemented and quality assured in the first release.

...
You only look at the issue from the developer point of view. But how 
about QA? How are you going to QA the whole Unicode? You also need to 
look at the issue from an end-user point of view, or the "working out of 
box" point of view. How could the end user know what kind of function 
they are going to get WITHOUT extra efforts.
 

True, I hadn't looked at the QA issue. I suppose there are two ways to 
go here: one would be to aim at support for the whole of Unicode but 
only assure support for certain ranges; the other is for the QA people 
to work with third party fonts. QA-ing the whole of Unicode shouldn't be 
a big problem anyway as most work needs to be done on new features 
rather than new characters e.g. if one script using special feature X is 
assured to work, a rather quick test should be sufficient to show that 
every script using feature X works.

If you are a QA engineer who is working on a working out of box product, 
how are you going to prepare your test cases? If you are a product 
marketing person who is going to write a product specification about a 
cell phone which do not allow user to download fonts, how are you going 
to spec it out?
 

Well, I was thinking of computers rather than brain dead mobile phones. 
Mobile phones have long allowed downloading of ring tones, so why not 
downloading of fonts? And there is probably already a significant demand 
for mobile phones using every script which is in current everyday use, 
and so mobile phone manufacturers who restrict users to more restrictive 
subsets are being shortsighted - although I would expect that full BMP 
support would be adequate for a basic product in this scenario.

You are assuming a product which is does not need to work "out of box". 
If that is the case, you can ALSO think Windows 2000 work for surrogate 
since you can install or tweak the register to make it work with 
Surrogate. You can ALSO think Windows 95 can support Complex Script 
since you can INSTALL Uniscribe on it, right?
 

Right. My Windows 2000 supports surrogates, probably because either one 
of the service packs or Office XP installed this support for me. When I 
was using Windows 95 I could use complex scripts in IE5 and Office 2000 
- the required support (Uniscribe etc) was installed with these 
programs. These are things which should be supported out of the box, 
although they were not quite in Windows. I am realising that certain 
scripts may not have font support out of the box, but that is something 
which can easily be remedied.

--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
http://www.qaya.org/

RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?

[Michael Everson]

At 03:39 -0800 2003-12-03, John Hudson wrote:
At 02:53 AM 12/3/2003, Michael Everson wrote:

Such a font seems easy to create automatically by using the basic
glyphs of a base font containing the ASCII letters and digits, and
a source text file giving the name and range of Unicode code point
blocks, as well as a representative character or string.
You don't know much about drawing fonts, evidently.
To be fair to Philippe, what he suggests isn't too far beyond what 
is currently possible with the latest generation of 
Python-scriptable font tools.
If you say so. I find that I cannot imagine how I would have drawn 
the glyphs by some automated process.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com