https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=51843
--- Comment #8 from Glenn Adams <[email protected]> --- (In reply to comment #7) > Hello! > > Thanks for your reply! Here are a few clarifications! > > > the vast majority of modern usage, > Many, many software do not support non-BMP characters. I would like to > clarify that FOP is not the only one. The fact that non-BMP characters are > poorly supported is among the main reasons why non-BMP characters are seldom > encoded as such. Instead, work-arounds are used. For example, non-BMP > characters are often converted to parts of the so called "private use area" > (U+E000 to U+F8FF) before being processed. Sometimes, "font-tricks" are > used, where the glyphs of one alphabet are just copied to a BMP-alphabet's > place -- reminding of the (early) nineties, where greek and cyrillic glyphs > (among others) were often living in "ASCII"-fonts. Sometimes, they are > replaced by PNG's. All these work-arounds contribute to many confusions and > also contribute to the "non-visibility" of these alphabets and to great > difficulties to find text written with these character sets. > > In other words, the poor support for non-BMP characters is indeed one of the > main reasons for their "non-visibility". It is important to avoid > misinterpretations here: these characters are both used and useful. > > > demonstrate to me a real, current need to use non-BMP characters > To be accepted as part of Unicode, an alphabet or other character set (such > as mathematical symbols, etc.) needs to be supported by a VERY active > community during a long time. Otherwise, the Unicode consortium does not > include this alphabet. The very fact that Unicode includes non-BMP alphabets > and other character sets is a proof that an active community needs those > characters. > > On the other hand, the fact that dozens of alphabets are still absent from > Unicode shall not be misinterpreted as a non-usage of these alphabets. > > > adding full CJK support, > Thousands of CJK characters live outside the BMP. A full CJK support > requires support for non-BMP characters. > > > If you wish to contribute a patch that adds non-BMP support, > I plan to try to write some kind of fix this summer. > > Regards! > > SaaĊĦha, again you are giving me general reasons, but not specific ones that drive your immediate needs; i am extremely familiar with Unicode, having been a co-author of Unicode 2.0, a technical director of the Unicode consortium from 93-98, and Unicode's representative to the ISO SC2/WG2 IRG (Ideographic Rapporteur Group), who created the CJK encodings in Unicode; i want to know specifically what non-BMP characters *you* want to use and what specific fonts *you* will use to print these non-BMP characters; if you can demonstrate a good, real need (as opposed to generalities), then perhaps I will be inclined to give non-BMP support a greater priority; if not, I will continue to assign higher priority to other features that better support non-Roman scripts that use the BMP; regarding CJK and non-BMP, I agree that it is useful to support those characters, however, i'd like to see fonts that are available for these characters first; -- You are receiving this mail because: You are the assignee for the bug.
