Re: newbie 18030 font question

[Markus Scherer]

GB 18030 is defined with a 1:1 mapping table to Unicode. It has large code spaces for user-defined characters, but the standard repertoire is the same as Unicode's.

In practice, all modern browsers work internally with Unicode no matter what page charset is received. They all convert from the page charset to Unicode, and for form submissions convert from Unicode back to the appropriate charset.

GB 18030 is supported by some newer browsers, but Unicode will be more reliable. (Usually UTF-8 for HTML, but UTF-16 is also possible.)

In other words, your browser will display Unicode text even if you send GB 18030. Unicode fonts are all you need. You might have to look for fonts with large repertoires though. Others on this list will be able to point you to such fonts.

For GB 18030 support it is sufficient to support the repertoire (Unicode allows this) and to be able to input and output GB 18030 via conversion - most vendors do it this way.

Best regards,
markus

http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/docs/papers/gb18030.html

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