On Wed, Oct 23, 2002 at 06:49:38PM -0400, David J. Perry wrote: > > First, is it compliant with Unicode for an Antiqua font to use an s > > glyph for ſ (U+017F)? It makes switching between Antiqua and Fraktur > > fonts possible, and it is arguably the glyph given to the middle s > > in modern Antiqua fonts. > > If you are sure that the font will only be used for printing German > this might be OK as a stopgap.
Why? Yes, if you want to use a true long s, you're going to need a different font. But I can see this paired with an old Antiqua font, too, if you want to use it for an exact copy of the American Constitution or something. > However, even with German, here's the > problem: if a user searched for a word containing -s at the end, and > typed it using the s key, then it would not be matched (unless the > search engine already knew that long s and s are equivalent). You've got the long s and s reversed. In old printing, the s is the letter that appears at the end. I don't see it as a problem; if you typed in the long s, search for the long s. It might get confusing if more general purpose fonts started doing this, but unless you have a need to exactly reproduce the original document, you probably shouldn't use the long s anyway. > An > OpenType font that is smart enough to substitute a long s glyph at the > right spots is the much superior long-term solution. There are two problems with this; one, German has had a number of orthography changes, each time changing slightly when you're supposed to use the long s (IIRC). Secondly, no matter what the convention, it requires a dictionary lookup for various case; I'm not sure you can do that in an OpenType font, and it's not something I'm sure I want a renderer doing in the first place. -- David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom-- A field where a thousand corpses lie. -- Stephen Crane, "War is Kind"
