From: Chris Jacobs (c.t.m.jacobs@hccnet.nl)
Date: Tue Mar 18 2003 - 11:54:01 EST
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pim Blokland" <pblokland@planet.nl>
To: "Unicode mailing list" <unicode@unicode.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 12:43 PM
Subject: Re: Custom fonts (was: Tolkien wanta-be)
> Chris Jacobs schreef:
>
> > If I interpret a B font declaration on a webpage as a private
> > agreement
> > that for data in that font on that webpage a PUA will be used were
> > U+E000 is
> > a banana that does not imply that I claim anything about which PUA
> > I use for
> > other purposes.
>
> You keep making it more and more difficult for the rest of us to
> follow you.
> To start with, your use of "PUA" is not what is generally meant by
> "PUA".
> There is no such thing as "a" PUA; there is only one Private Use
> Area, which consist of all the codepoints that will not be assigned
> a specific use by the Unicode Consortium. You cannot say that the
> range of codepoints U+E000..U+E0FF is a different PUA than
> U+E100..U+E1FF.
I don't say that the range of codepoints U+E000-U+E0FF is a different PUA
than U+E100-U+E1FF.
I do say that if a webpage has U+E000 defined as banana and I have it
defined as apple, that then their range U+E000-U+F8FF is a different PUA,
belonging to a different extension of unicode than my range U+E000-U+F8FF
> Secondly, you must be aware there is not, and will not be, a rule
> about what characters in that area should look like. Yet you insist
> on trying to convince everybody it's a good idea to remap, for
> example "banana" to U+E100, even if the font calls it U+E000. You
> keep on about what a good idea it would be to be able to rearrange
> code points such that no matter how many fonts you have in use,
> there is always a banana at U+E100. This is a restriction, an
> unwelcome intrusion on the PUA!
Being able to do things is not a restriction.
> You also can't seem to decide if this is just something you want to
> do on your own computer, or if you also want to use this scheme for
> information interchange with other users.
That is not something that should be decided upon here once and for all. If
I want to use this scheme for information interchange with some other users
then I establish private agreements with those other users.
> Now what you do in the privacy of your own home is none of our
> concern, but when communicating with the outside world, there are
> certain rules and guidelines you should abide by. And one of those
> guidelines is a plaintext file should not have PUA characters in
> them, unless its author also specifies it should be displayed using
> a certain font.
Nope. Specifying a font is just one method of specifying a private
agreement, but certainly not the only possible one.
Suppose I want in my PUA control characters, like a <MOVE> or a <COPY>
system support operation, How do you want to define those characters in a
font?
> Now if the font it should use is known, the proper
> codepoint to display this banana of yours is also known, because
> this info is in the font. Ergo, no need to remap!
> Since not all fonts have a banana, it really doesn't make much sense
> to not specify a font. The computer wouldn't know what to do!
>
> Lastly, I must say I think it's a pity that the suggestion I made
> yesterday has been ignored so quietly. You know, in a HTML
> environment, to retrieve names for characters from the font file
> itself, to relieve the author from the task of having to enter
> numerical values.
> For an example, suppose you have a font named "Tengwar Quenya", with
> a character named "hwesta" at U+E00B,
Then you would no longer be able to specify the font by the font name, since
you would have two fonts named "Tengwar Quenya".
> you could use it in an XML
> file by defining an entity, <!ENTITY hwesta "">. Now my
> suggestion was the browser program which displays this file should
> be able to look at the font information in the XML file, open the
> font file and retrieve the names of all characters in it, so it can
> show the "&hwesta;" character (and all other characters) without
> needing a long list of ENTITY entries in the XML.
>
> Anyone else think this would be a good idea?
>
> Pim Blokland
>
>
>
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