> B. Program (or library) determines which fonts installed on the system can > handle which of the characters given it, and breaks the text up into > ranges*, and draws each range with the right fonts. > > * With proper BIDI ordering, of course!
This is closer to what Uniscribe does. > B depends on whatever heuristic the system has for determining which fonts > "go together". It also applears that B is not done automatically with the > basic drawing & measuring routines in Windows, but requires you to use the > Uniscribe library. I don't know if that library is always invoked when > drawing every piece of text that appears to the user: menu labels, button > labels, etc. It is always used if you are on Windows 2000 or XP and do not specifically choose to *not* use it (programs like Word need to do this since they have their own shaping engines and having the two duel for supremacy is not pretty!). Probably better to actually try it and see? :-) > A has a specific list: there is no doubt as to which fonts you get for which > characters (unless some of the fonts are not installed). Moreover, every > time you use the composite font, even with the low-level string drawing and > measuring API, you get the same results. This is not Uniscribe, no. I am not a font person so I do not know how possible/practical/existing this approach is under Windows. MichKa Michael Kaplan Trigeminal Software, Inc. http://www.trigeminal.com/
