Re: Apostrophes at www.unicode.org

From: Michael S. Kaplan (michka@trigeminal.com)
Date: Fri Aug 24 2007 - 14:30:46 CDT

  • Next message: James Kass: "Control picture glyphs (was Re: Apostrophes at www.unicode.org)"

    It is hard to justify the time to do the work or take up the space in the font to define such things if they are not ever defined for your characters. So while I see the ideal behavior from the Unicode side, it is hard to see the typographic side agreeing with in many (most?) cases....

    MichKa [Microsoft]
    Windows International
    Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap

      ----- Original Message -----
      From: Mark Davis
      To: James Kass
      Cc: Unicode Mailing List
      Sent: Friday, August 24, 2007 10:46 AM
      Subject: Re: Apostrophes at www.unicode.org

      If that is a common perception, then we certainly need to correct that misapprehension.

      For general-purpose fonts, the default ignorable code points should be invisible, just like whitespace characters should be invisible. Specialized fonts, such as those used for a "Show Hidden" mode or for code charts, may well want to have visible glyphs for default ignorables, whitespace characters, controls, confusable characters, and so on, so that people can see the internals of their text. But those are very specialized cases.

      Mark

      On 8/24/07, James Kass <thunder-bird@earthlink.net > wrote:

        Mark Davis wrote,

    >A similar annoyance is the fact that so many fonts don't map the
    >default-ignorable code points (like variation selectors) to a zero-width
    >invisible glyph by default.

        It's up to individual font developers to weigh the pros and cons
        of including control picture glyphs for such characters, as it
        should be.

        Mapping characters like VS to zero-width no outline glyphs would
        mean, for one thing, that applications which give the user the
        option of displaying control characters (and related items) would
        not be able to get appropriate outlines for such characters from
        the font. Opinions on this differ, as discussed on this list in years
        past.

        If an OpenType font supports a sequence which involves a VS, the
        user won't see the control picture. If the font doesn't support
        the particular sequence, it can be helpful if that is reflected in
        the display.

        Best regards,

        James Kass

      --
      Mark

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