Hi Graeme, The plot thickens! See below.
On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 3:42 AM, Graeme Kidd <[email protected]> wrote: > > > ---------------------------------------- >> Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2011 00:56:37 +0100 >> Subject: Re: [Freefont-bugs] Add extra characters to FreeSerif >> From: [email protected] >> To: [email protected] >> CC: [email protected] >> >> Hi Graeme, >> >> Some ideas below: > > Thanks for the tips but I am on a Windows Vista machine (Frontforge compiled > via cygwin), but before I go debugging it further can I just confirm that "ℤ" > (0x2124) and "ℝ" (0x211d) do exist. Looking through the FreeSerif glyphs I > found two group of blackboard bold letters. The first were in uppercase A > (6644 0x19f4 Abb) to G (6649 0x19f9 Gbb), I (6650 0x19fa Ibb) to O (6655 > 0x19ff Obb) and S (6656 0x1a00 Sbb) to Y (6662 0x1a06 Ybb). The second were > in lowercase and went from a (6663 0x1a07 abb) to z (6688 0x1a20 zbb). > > Should I not expect to see the R between O and S and the Z after Y? I can > also confirm that I am using the 20100919 file. > Regarding Vista, it is also possible for different installations of one font to get tangled up. I have seen it happen. If you go to a DOS prompt and navigate to the system fonts directory, sometimes you will see ghost versions of previously installed fonts. I recall there was no obvious way to clean them out, and I had to do something sneaky. Just what are you seeing that appears wrong? (What are you looking at in what application program, and what do you expect to see?) Regarding the curious distribution of the blackboard bold letters: you are seeing an effect of the uncertain development of Unicode. The "ℤ" (0x2124) and "ℝ" (0x211d) in question are in the Unicode range Letterlike Symbols http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2100.pdf The other blackboard bold symbols are from the monster range Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1D400.pdf Historically, the Letterlike Symbols range appeared first, as a rather haphazard collection of often-appearing symbols, the R and Z being very commonly used in math to represent the algebras of the real numbers and the integers [German: Zahl], respectively. Later, they decided, what the heck, let's add whole ranges of these styled characters. But they have some policy not to repeat a letter, so there are holes in the mathematical blackboard bold range that serve specifically as placeholders for the previously-defined symbols. Unfortunately the decision to add whole ranges of styled letters played conceptual havoc with Unicode users. Originally, Unicode was meant to encode symbols of differing *semantic* values, and specifically *not* differing *styles*. This latter range seems to consist of ranges of styles of the Latin alphabet, which have no particular semantic meaning. Well OK you could say they can hold arbitrary but different semantic meaning in math text. Anyway, the problem is, I have a font which has a roman, italic, and bold style. Inside the roman style, this range holds bold and italic versions of the same face. Now... what goes in the same place of the bold version of the font? A *more* bold style of the bold and italic symbols? What happens in my bold-italic style? is the bold-italic range bolder and italicer? I guess so. What a mess. The answer to your question is: No. In accordance with the Unicode standard, the blackboard bold R and Z are in Letterlike Symbols, and there are holes in the Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols where you would expect to find those styled letters. Cheers!
