From: John Hudson (tiro@tiro.com)
Date: Thu Nov 21 2002 - 12:21:24 EST
At 05:34 AM 11/21/2002, Gary P. Grosso wrote:
>As this will likely come up in my line of work (tech support and
>troubleshooting for products which, among other things, export HTML),
>I would be interested in any more detail/explanation (or pointers to
>such) about "using Uniscribe for complex text rendering" and/or why
>using Arial Unicode MS would cause such a problem, or why using a
>different font would solve the problem.
Uniscribe contains the MS complex script shaping engines. These perform a
variety of functions, depending on the script, including character
re-ordering and application of OpenType Layout features for basic language
shaping. In order for a Uniscribe application to correctly display a
complex script, the version of Uniscribe that supports the script must be
installed (Uniscribe ships with Windows and with IE; depending on the
version of Windows or IE, you will encounter slightly different script
support/implementation), and you need a font that contains appropriate
OpenType Layout (glyph substitution and glyph positioning) to render the
script. The current shipping version of Arial Unicode MS contains basic
Hindi characters, but does not contain the additional glyphs or layout
features necessary to correctly display Hindi; I believe MS are working on
an update to this font.
For more information see:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/specs/default.htm
>I think I'm "hearing" that some combination and/or reordering
>of glyphs is needed for Hindi, and just having the right characters
>alone isn't enough... is that on the right track?
Correct. This is why Hindi is a 'complex script'.
John Hudson
Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com
Vancouver, BC tiro@tiro.com
It is necessary that by all means and cunning,
the cursed owners of books should be persuaded
to make them available to us, either by argument
or by force. - Michael Apostolis, 1467
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