Re: Unicode WYSIWYG - WYSIWYS campaign
Re: Unicode WYSIWYG - WYSIWYS campaign
- Subject: Re: Unicode WYSIWYG - WYSIWYS campaign
- From: Henrik Holmegaard <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 17:51:34 +0100
Some off-line questions :
Overall question :
What does the term text management imply?
Answer : It implies that the Unicode source character string is
rendered into an OpenType glyph order which is embedded in the PDF
alongside actual Unicode source character string (using the ActualText
construct). This way the embedded glyph orders can be searched
semantically, or to put it simply WYSIWYG equals WYSIWYS.
Detailled questions :
1. Is Unicode ordering of fonts is relatively new (at least on the Mac)?
Answer : Yes.
2. Does Unicode mean that characters will always be referenced by
common code which is accessed by a keystroke - "x" will always be
accessed by pressing "option+o" or in the windows world by a 4 digit
code number in combination with ?the alt key?
Answer : Yes, if by keystroke (singular) you mean both the x on the
Danish keyboard and the absolute Alt+Unicode Hex co-ordinate for x on a
non-Danish keyboard. An Adobe OpenType Pro font such as Myriad supports
three writing systems, Western European / Central European, Cyrillic
and Greek, and the Unicode co-ordinate system still further reduces the
role of the national keyboard for text entry and text retrieval. So
there are two approaches, the national keyboard with the flag for the
language and script chosen in the Main Menu bar, or the Unicode Hex
Input Method if you don't have the necessary keyboard.
3. If people use fonts that don't subscribe to unicode ordering then
search functions will not work within their published documents?
Answer : There is backward compatibility for Adobe Type 1 and Apple
TrueType Simple fonts (of which the latter may have a Unicode table in
the CMap construct of the SNFT structure, see the type tools on
www.apple.com/fonts). This only works if the font maker placed glyphs
(letterforms) where these legacy encodings expect them to be.
Note : With PDF you always have the glyph order in the form of the
embedded outlines. With XML you _don't_ have the glyph order, only the
character string. And if the character string says EVected instead of
Effected the XML is useless, whether as UTF8 or UTF16 doesn't matter.
Adobe wins every which way with InDesign 3 and PDF.
4. If people use fonts that don't subscribe to unicode ordering then
their documents won't be appropriately referenced by search engines?
Answer : If the glyph order on the screen says Effected and the
character string says EVected, neither Acrobat nor any search engine
will find Effected because it literally does not exist as textual
information (: character string).
5. Is OSX's expectation of Unicode font structuring the reason that I'm
encountering many fonts that seem "scrambled" now?
Answer : Not sure what scrambled implies, but for the record Apple Type
Services for Unicode (ATSUI) and the Line Layout Manager (LLM) apply
Apple Advanced Typography (AAT) tables for glyph ordering, but not
OpenType line layout tables. There are Japanese OpenType fonts with
cubic Type 1 outlines that ship with the OS, but my understanding is
that they include non-standard tables. InDesign scales outlines in
Apple Advanced Typography fonts, but it does not use the AAT tables or
the LLM OS-level mechanism. InDesign can only get at the rich glyph
complements of AAT fonts through the Glyph Palette, and not through the
tables in AAT fonts.
6. What is a good beginner's resource about fonts and how they're built?
Answer : In my experience it is a self-help area. The Adobe OpenType
Specification and the Apple TrueType Specification are human readable.
The Adobe OpenType Guide describes which layout features each Adobe
application supports. The FontLab people at www.fontlab.com have a
white paper by Adobe on the difference between Type 1, TrueType and
OpenType, see
http://www.fontlab.com//html/faq.html. Apple has a white
paper on the difference between GX / AAT and OpenType, see
http://developer.apple.com/fonts/WhitePapers/index.html.
Thanks,
Henrik
_______________________________________________
colorsync-users mailing list | email@hidden
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives:
http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/colorsync-users
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.