Re: Character Identity and Font Selection

From: vanisaac@boil.afraid.org
Date: Wed Jun 08 2011 - 22:21:01 CDT

  • Next message: vanisaac@boil.afraid.org: "Re: Character Identity and Font Selection"

    From: Karl Pentzlin (karl-pentzlin@acssoft.de)

    > If you want to use special Unicode characters e.g. for linguistic work
    > (beyond common things like IPA), it is a fact that you need
    > special fonts which contain these characters.
    > Usually, you cannot expect to have them included in standard fonts
    > like Arial or Times New Roman.
    >
    > However, a character, once selected, has to be displayed as the
    > "correct" character in all situations as long as the used font contains it
    > at all.
    > Otherwise, the character has a "multiple identity", which indicates an
    > erroneous unification of different abstract characters into a single
    > Unicode point.
    > Font selection is a selection for a stylistic or aesthetic preference,
    > not a means to select a specific character.
    >
    > (This is a generally applicable answer to an issue raised during
    > discussions at the ongoing SC2/WG2 meeting in Helsinki.)
    >
    > - Karl Pentzlin

    Can anyone remind me why Variation sequences aren't the appropriate response to the IPA problem? It seems to me that 'a' + VS1 should be defined as the two-story IPA a, and 'g' + VS1 should be defined as the single story IPA g. It would restrict the set of glyphs that should be used to represent the character, but not create a duplicate encoding - exactly what the variation selectors were encoded for, right?

    -Van



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