William Overington wrote:
> I am running a PC that has Windows 95, Word 97 and Internet Explorer 4.
>
> I downloaded the zip file and unzipped it and got the font file. I then
> used Word 97, set the font to Code 2001 and the size to 24 point.
>
> I added a letter a to make sure it was working and then used Insert Symbol
> to add three of the non-everyday characters. There were not a lot from
> which to choose, so I expect that most of the characters in the font are not
> available with the computer system that I am using.
>
True, regrettably.
> I added a character that looks vaguely like a Greek theta, a character that
> looks like an ornate capital N and a character that looks as if it is a
> runic character something like a mirror image of a letter K.
>
> I saved as HTML from Word 97 and looked at the source code provided.
>
> The four characters are coded as
>
> aℕ
>
> Two of the characters, the  and the  appear to be from the
> private use area.
>
There are characters in the PUA of the BMP, some were
characters from preliminary proposals which didn't make
it into the Standard like the Gothic letter with the diaeresis.
There are also letters from elsewhere in the BMP which
are supposed to complement the Mathematic Alphabets
section (which is still not complete).
<snip>
Software like Fairy, mentioned before on this list, offers options
to users of older systems. For testing support in browsers,
Marco Cimarosti's chart system works very well, but my
browser doesn't support non-BMP characters. I'm running
Windows M.E. mainly, with MSIE 5.5. The MSIE on the W2K
system here also doesn't display non-BMP characters, either
Plane One or Plane Two. Later in your post you mention the
possibility of using Java to enable display on Win 9x. This
might be a way to show these special new characters and
I look forward to posts from some of the Java experts on
this list.
<snip>
> >
> >Michael (michka) Kaplan wrote:
> >
> >...
> >> It is not
> >> obsolete in pratical terms until there is widespread support in the way
> of
> >> fonts, keyboards, IMEs, and the other important items that help bring
> >> characters to the user.
> >>
>
> What is an IME please?
Input Method Editor (I think, the acronym isn't parsed on
the following linked page.) The IME for Korean, for
example, can be downloaded and used on Win 9x systems,
but only in applications which are Unicode aware, like
Outlook Express (as far as I can tell).
Please see
http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/ie/Features/ime.asp
for more information.
>
> What are the other important items please?
>
Sorting abilities and language specific rules like word-break
and line-break come to mind along with dictionaries for
spelling checks. These would seem to be important items,
yet not essential.
Best regards,
James Kass.
