From: verdy_p (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Sat Dec 05 2009 - 09:00:30 CST
It's true that the Adobe FLEX text engine is probably the most consistent model for fine typography. It should
really inspire the developers of CSS3, and web browsers, so that they fix their text renderers, and adopt most of
the custom CSS styling rules in FLEX documentation, that are remarquably rich.
Why doesn't Adobe propose its own web browser based on its text engine? It's strange given that it already has all
the logic needed (for Javascript, CSS, XML and DOM parsers, and most of XHTML, exclusing some backward-compatibility
legacies inherited from HTML and IE's "Quirk mode").
At least it would be immediately useful for new adopters or Windows 7 (in Europe where IE8 is not included), and it
would help improve the existing benchmarks and compatibility tests (like ACID). And it would really accelerate the
conversion of word processing documents to web standards (for OpenOffice and even for MS Office), with better
interoperability (in in fine, the Flash proprietary extesions could be supported and ported to the refined web
standards as well), and it would help ending the war between document formats.
And with better support within text engines, it would also simplify the reusability of fonts hose design could
become simpler with less software-specific features (we also need a better standard for fonts, but this highly
depend on renderer capabilities).
> Message du 04/12/09 18:52
> De : "Eric Muller"
> A :
> Copie à : "Unicode Mailing List"
> Objet : Re: Medievalist ligature character in the PUA
>
>
> Doug Ewell wrote:
> > Then there are fonts like the DejaVu family, which (on my machine,
> > running BabelPad) display "fi" as a ligature by default, but break the
> > ligature when either ZWJ *or* ZWNJ is inserted between the "f" and the
> > "i".
> >
>
> This is another example of my mantra that what matters is the
> combination of the layout engine and the font. If you were to try this
> font with the flash.text.engine in Flash Player 10, you would get what
> you expect: "f ZWJ i" ligates regardless of the styling (i.e. even if
> the styling asks for no ligatures; the ZWJ takes precedence over
> styling), "f ZWNJ i" does not ligate regardless of the styling, and "f
> i" ligates or not depending on the styling. While it certainly takes
> some support in the font (having a ligature, and exposing it somehow),
> layout engines are in the business of interpreting the characters and
> driving the font appropriately. What matters is the aggregate.
>
> Eric.
>
>
>
>
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