[no subject]

[Jim Breen <jwb@example.com>]

Catching up with some email....

>> Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 18:03:08 +0900
>> From: Stephen Lee <sl@example.com>
>> Jim Breen <jwb@example.com> wrote:
>> > >> From: Ulrich Plate <plate@example.com>
>> > >> Or is it still possible to
>> > >> match Chinese and Japanese rendering styles in a Unicoded document
>> > >> within a single font, provided the text declares the language tag
>> > >> correctly? 
>> > 
>> > Well, not with a single font.
>> 
>> It could be desirable to use the same font and have a consistent look in
>> a document that e.g. mixes Chinese and Japanese.

To be frank, I don't see this as desirable at all. Fonts are a means to 
achieving a particular display image, and I think a font/style is a better 
way to go.

>> Technology-wise, a single font can support variant glyphs of a single
>> character, although I have yet to see a good implementation.  This is
>> probably because I don't buy fonts, but considering how even a large
>> company like MS have problems with having a consistent look between
>> JIS-0208 and JIS-0212 characters, it will take a lot of effort to
>> achieve a single CJK font.
>> 
>> Here's proof that a font can contain variants, from someone you know
>> well :-)
>> 
>> http://www.unicode.org/iuc/iuc13/a10/slides.pdf

I don't really agree with Ken on this. I think glyph substitution tables
are a disaster waiting to happen. Anyway, Ken is talking more about things
like 学 <-> 學 mappings, which is more one of character variant rather than
strict glyph. What I meant is the issue of "Chinese-style" characters
vs "Japanese-style" characters. Often the stroke are the same, and it comes
down to things like the placement of the kusakanmuri element, etc.

>> Unicode 3.1 have code points for language tags, but their use is
>> strongly discouraged:
>> 
>> http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr27/#tag
>> 
>> "The characters in this block provide a mechanism for language tagging
>> in Unicode plain text. However, the use of these characters is strongly
>> discouraged. The characters in this block are reserved for use with
>> special protocols. They are not to be used in the absence of such
>> protocols, or with any protocols that provide alternate means for
>> language tagging, such as HTML or XML. The requirement for language
>> information embedded in plain text data is often overstated. See Section
>> 5.11, Language Information in Plain Text in The Unicode Standard,
>> Version 3.0...."

And I totally agree with their deprecation. Those language tag code
points met with a lot of opposition, so it was a compromise to let
them in then deprecate them.

Jim

-- 
Jim Breen  (j.breen@example.com  http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/)
Computer Science & Software Engineering,                Tel: +61 3 9905 3298
P.O Box 26, Monash University, Clayton VIC 3800         Fax: +61 3 9905 5146
Australia         (Monash Provider No. 00008C)   ジム・ブリーン@モナシュ大学