I'm pretty much in agreement with what you say, except the following: > Of course, the term "Unicode font" is also often used to mean "a font > that covers all, or nearly all, of Unicode."
I would consider a Unicode font to be one that met your other conditions, aside from the repertoire. If I had a font that covered Latin, Greek and Cyrillic and worked with Unicode strings, for example, I would still consider that a Unicode font. I just wouldn't consider it a (pick your adjective) full / complete Unicode font. Mark __________________________________ http://www.macchiato.com ► “Eppur si muove” ◄ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Ewell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Unicode Mailing List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, October 28, 2002 17:37 Subject: Re: Character identities > My USD 0.02, as someone who is neither a professional typographer nor a > font designer (more than one, but not quite two, different things)... > > Discussions about the character-glyph model often mention the "essential > characteristics" of a given character. For example, a Latin capital A > can be bold, italic, script, sans-serif, etc., but it must always have > that essential "A-ness" such that readers of (e.g.) English can identify > it as an A instead of, say, an O or a 4 or a picture of a duck. (Mark > Davis has a chart showing dozens of different A's in his "Unicode Myths" > presentation.) > > Somewhere in between the obvious relationships (A = A, B ≠ A), we have > the case pair A and a. They are not identical, but they are certainly > more similar to each other than are A and B. > > It seems to me, as a non-font guy, that calling a font a "Unicode font" > implies two things: > > 1. It must be based on Unicode code points. For True- and OpenType > fonts, this implies a Unicode cmap; for other font technologies it > implies some more-or-less equivalent mechanism. The point is that > glyphs must be associated with Unicode code points (not necessarily > 1-to-1, of course), not merely with an internal 8-bit table that can be > mapped to Unicode only through some other piece of software. > > 2. The glyphs must reflect the "essential characteristics" of the > Unicode character to which they are mapped. That means a capital A can > be bold, italic, script, sans-serif, etc. A small a can also be > small-caps (or even full-size caps), but I think this is the only > controversial point. > > In a Unicode font, U+0041 cannot be mapped to a capital A with macron, > as it is in Bookshelf Symbol 1; nor to a six-pointed star, as in > Monotype Sorts; nor to a hand holding up two fingers, as in Wingdings. > (But it can be mapped to a "notdef" glyph, if the font makes no claim to > supporting U+0041.) > > U+0915 absolutely can have snow on it, or be bold or italic or whatever > (or all of these), as long as a Devanagari reader would recognize its > essential "ka-ness." It cannot look like a Latin A, nor for that matter > can U+0041 look like a Devanagari ka. > > Font guys, do you agree with this? > > Of course, the term "Unicode font" is also often used to mean "a font > that covers all, or nearly all, of Unicode." Font technologies > generally don't even allow this, of course, and even by the standards of > "nearly" we are still limiting ourselves to things like Bitstream > Cyberbit, Arial Unicode MS, Code2000, Cardo, etc. Right or wrong, this > is a commonly accepted meaning for "Unicode font." > > -Doug Ewell > Fullerton, California > > >
