Stephen:
I have a few points to add to this thread. Most of your questions are about
MacOS X and other OS's, which I can't really speak to, but I do know
something about fonts. Apologies for the delay in replying.
At 06:13 PM 3/16/2001 -0800, Stephen Cremin wrote:
>I didn't catch Steve Job's keynote in Tokyo but I believe he announced that
>Mac OSX (out 24 March) would be supplied with Japanese fonts representing
>17,500 kanji. Presumably, Mac OSX is using Unicode to represent text
>internally.
>...
>Presumably using UTF8 encoding, other Mac OSX users who install the Japanese
>fonts can now display these 17,500 kanji leading to greater accuracy in
>online information. ...
Unicode-based encodings, by themselves, only give access some of these
glyphs. The other glyhs are mostly variants, and there are many Unicode
values that map to multiple glyphs. Some glyphs do not have a
corresponding Unicode character code. Therefore users must use applications
that take advantage of a smart layout system like AAT or OpenType features
to get access to all the glyphs. Adobe InDesign 1.0-J is an example of an
application that can access all glyphs (of an OpenType font) by means of a
glyph palette that uses OpenType features.
>I database information in Japanese (as well as Chinese and Korean) and I
>generally takes the lowest common denominator approach. I approximate
>characters to what can be displayed back to me [in the Japanese version of
>Mac OS8.0 running various language kits], with a note of the correct Unicode
>codepoint for future reference. Another factor that dictates how accurately
>I store kanji correctly is what I can expect to present to people over the
>internet.
Then you probably run headlong into the fact that the various character set
standards cover different subsets of the glyphs, and that Unicode by itself
covers only a subset of the glyphs. If you willing to rely on Unicode plus
text markup for OpenType features or AAT, you will be able to reach more
glyphs. But your requirement to present over the internet makes this
difficult.
>And any announcements from Apple on Chinese and Korean fonts? If this
>17,500 kanji refers to a specific "Unicode font" then I presume there are
>various Chinese, Japanese and Korean flavours. ...
I can't speak for Apple, but I can tell you that Adobe has been working
hard on developing Chinese and Korean glyph complements, which guide our
efforts in making Chinese and Korean fonts. See
<http://partners.adobe.com:80/asn/developer/type/cidfonts.html#CharCollDocs>
<http://partners.adobe.com:80/asn/developer/technotes/fonts.html>
Hope this helps,
--Jim DeLaHunt, Interim Head, Type Development
Adobe Systems Incorporated
M/S W-08, 345 Park Ave, San Jose, CA 95110-2702
email: delahunt@adobe.com, tel: +1-408-536-2690
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