RE: Fonts, glyphs and infinite Unicode (was String name etc).

From: Jon Hanna (jon@hackcraft.net)
Date: Mon Apr 25 2005 - 04:27:17 CST

  • Next message: Otto Stolz: "Re: String name and Character Name"

    > So here's what I would suggest as an alternative. This is out
    > of the scope of
    > the Unicode Consortium now, and I suspect the correct
    > relevant body is probably
    > the W3C consortium. Anyway, I reckon a small addition to CSS
    > could solve the
    > problem, something like:
    >
    > : font-url = "http://url.of.relevant.font.ttf"

    Out of scope for the Unicode Consortium, but it addresses practical matters with the use of Unicode that I don’t feel are out of scope here. CSS2.0 contains a mechanims for associating a font name with a downloadable file along the lines of:

    @font-face {
            font-family: "Robson Celtic";
            src: url("http://site/fonts/rob-celt")
          }
          H1 { font-family: "Robson Celtic", serif }

    To use the example in the spec. Implementation is a different matter, particularly as it comes to what format the fonts should be downloaded in (look to SVG fonts for progress there I feel). CSS3.0 goes further in allowing different font files to be used for different unicode character ranges.

    Competing proprietory mechanisms have been around since IE4 and NS4, but the competing nature of them led to a wait-and-see approach on the part of most developers (a good thing IMHO, we aren't locked into either as a de facto standard).

    Regards,
    Jon Hanna
    Work: <http://www.selkieweb.com/>
    Play: <http://www.hackcraft.net/>
    Chat: <irc://irc.freenode.net/selkie>

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Apr 25 2005 - 04:28:34 CST