From: Mark Davis (mark.davis@jtcsv.com)
Date: Sat Sep 28 2002 - 21:45:43 EDT
Another alternative is to check the font at install time, and then make sure
that the bits are set correctly.
Mark
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Murray Sargent" <murrays@Exchange.Microsoft.com>
To: "Michael Everson" <everson@evertype.com>
Cc: <unicode@unicode.org>
Sent: Saturday, September 28, 2002 13:19
Subject: RE: script or block detection needed for Unicode fonts
> Michael Everson said:
> > I don't understand why a particular bit has to be set in
> > some table. Why can't the OS just accept what's in the font?
>
> The main reason is performance. If an application has to check the font
> cmap for every character in a file, it slows down reading the file.
> Accordingly programs typically check the script bits of a font to see if
> the font claims to support a script. If so, the font is accepted. Else
> another font that has the appropriate bit is accepted. This info is
> cached, so it's very fast.
>
> A problem occurs more often with fonts that claim to support say Greek
> or Cyrillic, but only support the most common characters in these
> scripts. In RichEdit we now check the cmap for the less common Greek,
> Cyrillic, Arabic, etc., characters to ensure that they are in fact in
> the font. If not, we switch to some other font that has them.
>
> The problem with a font setting a script bit when the font only has a
> single glyph is that that font may then be used for other common
> characters in the script, thereby resulting in a missing-character glyph
> at display time.
>
> I suppose one could have it both ways by instructing a program to always
> check the cmap for a given font, thereby bypassing the more streamlined
> algorithms. This would be a handy option for specialized fonts. We'd
> need some font convention to turn on this behavior.
>
> Thanks
> Murray
>
>
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