Couple of notes on Word's support. Word has been based on Unicode since Word '97, although it certainly didn't support all of Unicode at that time. Word has displayed ruby in built-up form for several versions now (the name for it is under Asian formatting and called "phonetic guide").
Murray -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dean Snyder Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 11:53 AM To: Unicode List Subject: Unicode Ruby Can anyone recommend common and/or cross-platform technologies that render Unicode ruby text in ways other than simply enclosing it within trailing parentheses (in other words, technologies that would place it above the annotated text and in a smaller font size, as is typically done traditionally)? By technologies I'm thinking of things like internet browsers, email clients, word processors, desktop publishing programs, computer operating systems, and cross-platform programming platforms (like Java). ----------------------------------------- So far I've only checked on Mac OS X 10.3.6 and found the following: Browsers Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and OmniWeb all display Unicode ruby in parentheses. (Internet Explorer does, however, display *HTML* ruby above and smaller.) Word Processors Nisus Writer Express, Mellel, and TextEdit all display Unicode ruby in parentheses. I don't know about the latest Microsoft Word, which I understand does some Unicode, but the previous one, of course, didn't even do Unicode at all. Email Clients PowerMail and Apple Mail use parentheses. Desktop Publishing/Graphics Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator (all CS) use parentheses. Computer Operating Systems I can only assume, based on application behavior, that the Mac OS X default rendering of Unicode ruby is with parentheses, but I haven't explicitly checked the API documentation for this yet. I am not qualified to comment on Windows XP or Linux. Java I haven't checked the various Java virtual machines yet, but plan to do so. I would be very interested if anyone could provide similar information for Windows and Linux. ----------------------------------------------- Frankly I am disappointed with the results so far. It seems like everyone has taken the easy and ugly way out. I'm particularly surprised and disappointed by InDesign, a great page layout and desktop publishing application. But I would also have thought that the browsers would have been motivated to do better; even Internet Explorer, which shows that it is both doable and desirable by implementing it for html ruby, punted when it came to Unicode ruby. Isn't this basically just unacceptable for Japanese readers? Do we really put out computer operating systems localized for Japanese users without OS support for super-posed ruby? Anyway, my interest is in applying the ruby mechanism to cuneiform text, where, similar to Japanese, there is a one-to-many relationship between any given single (ideographic) character and its many possible context- free realizations. It would be important not to clutter the visual cuneiform text with roman-transliterations in parentheses after every character. I know custom software can handle ruby any way it wants to, and I am working on such software, but at the same time it is very important that operating systems and major software do the right thing here - users do not want to keep their text isolated in custom applications. And, anyway, shouldn't this already be in place and ubiquitous given the importance of properly supporting the Japanese script? ----------------------------------------------- An interesting aside: it is particularly felicitous to note that the typical practice of rendering ruby text in smaller font sizes than the text it annotates happens to be a PERFECT match for the needs of rendering annotated cuneiform plain text. All one needs to do is to look at the visual complexity of cuneiform glyphs to realize that, in order to be distinguishable on foreseeable display technologies, cuneiform glyphs need to be rendered in relatively larger font sizes than, say, Roman text. And exactly analogous to the Japanese situation, the secondary glyphs used for annotation of cuneiform happen to be glyphically simpler that the primary glyphs thereby permitting the reduction in size that emphasizes their secondary nature. A nice coincidence the benefits of which cuneiformists will simply inherit - no work request will be added to anybody's agenda (any implementor that does the right thing for Japanese will, by definition, be doing the right thing for cuneiform). It's always nice when such unforeseen things happen. Respectfully, Dean A. Snyder Assistant Research Scholar Manager, Digital Hammurabi Project Computer Science Department Whiting School of Engineering 218C New Engineering Building 3400 North Charles Street Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218 office: 410 516-6850 cell: 717 817-4897 www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi
