> > At 10:19 +0100 2004-08-11, saqqara wrote: > >This is one example where colour support in fonts would be useful. A useful > >addition to the OpenType specifications if any readers here have influence > >on such matters. > > Out of scope. You can use markup to make characters red. >
Of course but in the example, character has multiple colours (black and red) > >Something I have a vested interest in with my own focus on Ancient Egyptian > >Hieroglyphs. > > Budge used to print a solid black line over red Coffin text and the like. > Yes, certainly the use of red for spells in Coffin texts, for instance, or indeed most use of red ink in hieratic is properly a matter of semantics and markup makes sense here. However use of colour is a feature of Hieroglyphs and it would be entirely reasonable for an Ancient Egyptian to want a full colour font for applications such as Tomb decoration. Not that this has any ramifications for Unicode, except to highlight the fact that such would be primarily a font issue rather than character coding or markup. Practically, I don't expect this to cut much ice with OpenType developments unless modern examples in living scripts exist. > The answer to the original question about black a with red macron is: > > You cheat, just like they did in the good old days of lead type. For > that matter, just as they did when they had to put down one pen and > pick up another. > > You can't expect the encoding to colour elements of precomposed glyphs. If this form is used consistently throughout, then it is in fact a feature of the font and in an ideal world fonts would support the bi-colour glyphs. In an imperfect world, you must indeed expect to have to fudge the issue. Bob Richmond > -- > Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
