Re: Unicode WYSIWYG - WYSIWYS campaign
Re: Unicode WYSIWYG - WYSIWYS campaign
- Subject: Re: Unicode WYSIWYG - WYSIWYS campaign
- From: Henrik Holmegaard <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 15:28:12 +0100
I wrote:
>InDesign can only get at the rich glyph
>complements of AAT fonts through the Glyph Palette, and not through the
>tables in AAT fonts.
This may need a bit of explanation, partly because it refers to font
technology and partly because it has implications for professional
langauge services on the Macintosh.
The 1st generation Adobe Type 1 format was simply Gutenberg's composing
case reinvented in digital form.
The first 2nd generation font file format, Apple TrueType Simple, had a
concept of mapping subsets of glyphs to multiple language requirements.
The second 2nd generation font file format, Adobe CID Simple, had a
similar concept of subsetting glyphs.
The first 3rd generation font file format, Apple TrueType Advanced,
introduced line layout tables to make sure the character string would
copy and paste correctly.
The second 3rd generation font file format, Adobe OpenType, went
further by specifiying that the source character string must be Unicode.
From the point of view of professional language services, the tricky
part is that both Adobe and Apple have introduced WYSIWYG glyph pickers.
If the user inserts glyphs with the Apple glyph picker into TextEdit or
with the Adobe glyph picker into InDesign, then glyphs from _any_ font
file format may be inserted.
The Apple glyph picker (Character Palette > Glyph Catalog) does not
work in InDesign and the InDesign glyph picker (Glyph Palette) does not
work in TextEdit.
But as both glyph pickers access glyphs in whatever font file format in
WYSIWYG mode, it is deceptively easy to thing that this implies WYSIWYS
also.
In a sense it was much easier in WorldText on the OS 9 CD. Here you
have controls for the line layout tables, but _no_ glyph WYSIWYG picker.
You cannot insert into your document anything other than what the
supported font file format allows you to insert. Foolproof, fireproof
and bulletproof.
(To review GX Typography in 1994 special tools allowed a look at the
extended glyphs in Apple Skia GX.)
If you are a professional language provider there are four ways to
deliver content :
(1) Print only
(2) Native file format (Word, TextEdit &tc)
(3) Markup language (RTF, XML &tc)
(4) Page description language (PDF 1.4)
In my humble opinion a combination of (4) and (3) is secure, a
combination of (2) and (1) is not, unless the font is illegally copied
and several other parameters are set up. PDF 1.4 embeds the rendered
glyph order with the Unicode string embedded, and the UTF 16 string may
be separately added (Export > Text Only > Platform : Macintosh,
Encoding : Unicode). RTF is not yet Unicode-enabled but XML is
Unicode-enabled and may be used as an alternative to Unicode text
export.
Thanks,
Henrik
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