Have you looked at the Apple Last Resort font? Knowing from what character block an unsupported character comes is handy, but I wouldn't equate a little box with a picture and a Unicode range name with actually displaying, however poorly, a specific character.
It's better than not knowing what range the thing is in. It helps the user know he has received, say, Telugu data or whatever.
No argument there. As a last resort, the Last Resort font is a good idea and well executed. But it is still a means of displaying an *unsupported* character, not a way of supporting that character. I think we would agree that even minimal font support for a character would involve displaying something that is recognisable as that individual character.
John Hudson
Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Theory set out to produce texts that could not be processed successfully
by the commonsensical assumptions that ordinary language puts into play.
There are texts of theory that resist meaning so powerfully ... that the
very process of failing to comprehend the text is part of what it has to offer
- Lentricchia & Mclaughlin, _Critical terms for literary study_
