From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Mon Dec 30 2002 - 17:36:11 EST
At 11:42 AM 12/30/02 -0800, Doug Ewell wrote:
>For members of UTC and/or WG2: Are the TrueType fonts created with
>EUDCEDIT really of sufficient quality for publication in Unicode and/or
>10646?
No, they are probably not, but see below.
WG2 and UTC both have a font policy that is sufficient to deal with font
issues. It essentially says that acceptable fonts must be available to the
editors prior to publication. If fonts are not available to the editors at
the time of publication, then, in the extreme case, characters can be
editorially postponed until they are.
What the font policy does not say is that only the requester can submit
fonts, nor that the editors must use the font provided by the requester.
For small repertoires, getting a draft font from a submitter allows us to
work with font suppliers to get a matching font of publication quality.
That's in fact how over 90% of the repertoire is published today. Well over
1/2 of the characters use a private version of commercial fonts, donated to
the consortium. Slightly more than an additional 1/3 use commercial fonts
out of the box. The remainder is a mix of fonts build and/or compiled by
the editors based on their own font creation, submitted glyphs and fonts
donated from non-commercial sources.
In regards to your related comments about other shortcomings of submissals:
Neither the committees (nor the editors - if I may add that) are mere
automata, nor are they juries in the anglo-saxon sense (limited to consider
the law in light of what evidence is formally brought before them). Rather
they are populated with many highly intelligent, knowledgeable, and astute
individuals, who generally have the interests of the larger user community
in mind. The committees and their editors also have access to many
volunteers some of whom may take it upon themselves to do the research and
dig out any evidence that was missing in the original proposal (and in the
process correct any obvious errors). In many cases, individuals or vendors
will volunteer to provide the fonts for publication - and in fact to
continuously improve the font collection.
So you see, it's not a black&white thing. A clearly organized proposal,
with good and solid evidence, especially if reviewed and credibly endorsed
by the relevant user community, with usage examples and proper fonts will
of course make the work of the committees easier, and increase chances of
speedy passage.
But then, you knew that already.
Happy New Year,
A./
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