----- Original Message ----- From: "Pim Blokland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Unicode mailing list" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 12:43 PM Subject: Re: Custom fonts (was: Tolkien wanta-be)
> Chris Jacobs schreef: > > > If I interpret a B font declaration on a webpage as a private > > agreement > > that for data in that font on that webpage a PUA will be used were > > U+E000 is > > a banana that does not imply that I claim anything about which PUA > > I use for > > other purposes. > > You keep making it more and more difficult for the rest of us to > follow you. > To start with, your use of "PUA" is not what is generally meant by > "PUA". > There is no such thing as "a" PUA; there is only one Private Use > Area, which consist of all the codepoints that will not be assigned > a specific use by the Unicode Consortium. You cannot say that the > range of codepoints U+E000..U+E0FF is a different PUA than > U+E100..U+E1FF. I don't say that the range of codepoints U+E000-U+E0FF is a different PUA than U+E100-U+E1FF. I do say that if a webpage has U+E000 defined as banana and I have it defined as apple, that then their range U+E000-U+F8FF is a different PUA, belonging to a different extension of unicode than my range U+E000-U+F8FF > Secondly, you must be aware there is not, and will not be, a rule > about what characters in that area should look like. Yet you insist > on trying to convince everybody it's a good idea to remap, for > example "banana" to U+E100, even if the font calls it U+E000. You > keep on about what a good idea it would be to be able to rearrange > code points such that no matter how many fonts you have in use, > there is always a banana at U+E100. This is a restriction, an > unwelcome intrusion on the PUA! Being able to do things is not a restriction. > You also can't seem to decide if this is just something you want to > do on your own computer, or if you also want to use this scheme for > information interchange with other users. That is not something that should be decided upon here once and for all. If I want to use this scheme for information interchange with some other users then I establish private agreements with those other users. > Now what you do in the privacy of your own home is none of our > concern, but when communicating with the outside world, there are > certain rules and guidelines you should abide by. And one of those > guidelines is a plaintext file should not have PUA characters in > them, unless its author also specifies it should be displayed using > a certain font. Nope. Specifying a font is just one method of specifying a private agreement, but certainly not the only possible one. Suppose I want in my PUA control characters, like a <MOVE> or a <COPY> system support operation, How do you want to define those characters in a font? > Now if the font it should use is known, the proper > codepoint to display this banana of yours is also known, because > this info is in the font. Ergo, no need to remap! > Since not all fonts have a banana, it really doesn't make much sense > to not specify a font. The computer wouldn't know what to do! > > Lastly, I must say I think it's a pity that the suggestion I made > yesterday has been ignored so quietly. You know, in a HTML > environment, to retrieve names for characters from the font file > itself, to relieve the author from the task of having to enter > numerical values. > For an example, suppose you have a font named "Tengwar Quenya", with > a character named "hwesta" at U+E00B, Then you would no longer be able to specify the font by the font name, since you would have two fonts named "Tengwar Quenya". > you could use it in an XML > file by defining an entity, <!ENTITY hwesta "">. Now my > suggestion was the browser program which displays this file should > be able to look at the font information in the XML file, open the > font file and retrieve the names of all characters in it, so it can > show the "&hwesta;" character (and all other characters) without > needing a long list of ENTITY entries in the XML. > > Anyone else think this would be a good idea? > > Pim Blokland > > >
