Peter Constable wrote as follows.
On 08/03/2002 03:32:54 AM "William Overington" wrote:
>Actually, I have suggested some code points in relation to this in the
>following document.
> William, it seems like every time you contribute to a thread, you are
suggesting new code points. There are no new code points needed for
digraphs. Period. Unicode already has everything needed to encode digraphs
with aplomb!
Well, I seem to have not understood the difference between ligatures and
digraphs.
> I'd encourage you to wait for people who really know and understand
Unicode to comment on someone's suggestion before you start suggesting code
points to see if they're even needed.
Well, the chairman of the Unicode Technical Committee had already posted
twice in the thread and various other people had already posted.
> After all, you've only got 6000 PUA codepoints in the BMP, and you
probably don't want to run out of those too soon (given that plane 15/16
codepoints are unusable on older systems, which I recall was a concern of
yours).
Yes, I have used up quite a lot of the 6000 Private Use Area code points in
the BMP, yet I feel that I have added some useful facilities which are not
available in regular Unicode and which point to the future. For example,
the data entry facility to a computing engine using U+EC00 through to
U+EFFF, the portal to 24 bit (non-Unicode) graphic codes using some
surrogate-style triples, the codes for mouse operations for use in
interactive television systems and so on, as well as the golden ligatures
collection.
On the matter of access to planes other than the BMP using older equipment,
that is a concern. However, I am looking at the possibility of a new format
for advanced font files which do not need operating system support and thus
can be used by graphics programs on a Windows 95 or a Windows 98 platform.
I am hoping that this file format will include chromatic font facilities. I
am thinking in terms of the file format for this font format to be itself a
Unicode text file. In order to keep size down and to make use easier, I am
thinking in terms of defining code points for such things as DEFINE AN ON
CONTOUR POINT and DEFINE AN OFF CONTOUR POINT so that the file can use
quadratic Bézier curves for designing glyph contours. There would also be
individual code points for items such as START OF A CONTOUR and CLOSE
CONTOUR. Starting from new in order to produce a new advanced font format
is an interesting challenge and, since use on a variety of platforms and
chromatic font capabilities are part of the design considerations, hopefully
a useful result which will be useful both now and well into the future will
result.
Font file formats are not currently part of the Unicode specification and,
although the Unicode Consortium votes so as to point the way that advanced
format font systems are necessary for such matters as using ligature
characters, nevertheless there is no monopoly on who may devise an advanced
font format system and no monopoly on who may author and provide software
which uses such an advanced font format. Hopefully the Unicode Consortium
will treat any advanced font format produced by anyone on an even-handed
basis with advanced font formats produced by any other person or entity or
collection of entities.
William Overington
5 August 2002
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