I'm interesting in deploying some apps that use Devanagiri and Tamil
Unicode text, and making them appear correctly on both Windows and
Apples machines.
I'm just beginning the foray into the unicode world in InDesign after
waiting for several years for InDesign to get up to speed. Today it has,
well, almost. By using IndicPlus plug in, (fabulous and only $20.00) we
can now display OT (Open Type) unicode Indic fonts in InDesign.
But of course, I want to use RunRev Stacks -- it's more fun for users...
(smile)
The issue will be: Apple's use of the Atsui rendering engine which will
only properly display AAT unicode fonts (Apple Advance Typographical)
fonts. Meanwhile on Windows uses its own rendering engine and unicode
fonts must have OT Tables. At the Mac developer conference recently, one
top IT man from Malaysia who was there said that Apple will probably not
move form it's position in sticking with AAT fonts, and for good reason.
Apparently Window messed up with OneScribe engine and now users are
having trouble (it works one way on XP, another on Vista and some valid
OT fonts are not rendering properly at all on Vista). Meanwhile Adobe
has clearly made decision to write code for windows first and mac
second, and for some reason obstinately continues to lag behind in the
rendering of AAT fonts, even when Windows is starting to... end of sob
story... some of you must know it well already.
My assumption is: and please correct me if I am wrong: Revolution will
use the Atsui engine on the Mac to render Unicode fonts and therefore,
only AAT fonts will display properly. Meanwhile, that same stack, if it
were put on a Windows machine, will only work by calling a different OT
unicode font. Second assumption is that the work around for dealing with
this incompatibility issue would be to check for the platform and then
call a different font for the fields being use to display text. This
assumes that the unicode will be the same regardless of the font or
rendering environment.
but then, we have the old problem: will the user have the necessary
fonts on his system? Ideally we could carry the fonts in the stacks
themselves, but my understanding is that Rev embedded font capability is
limited to True Type fonts and not AAT fonts or OT fonts. So it will
mean either storing a font in a custom prop and then offering it to the
user to install (one for Mac and one for Win) or send them URL's with
instructions to download and install those fonts.
I'm hoping I'm wrong about this and that before I go down that road,
someone will tell us what brilliant solution they have for dealing with
this in Revolution. For Japanese, Chinese someone must have faced all
these issues already.
Danyavad - Thank you
Sivakatirswami
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