4 ms·

It would be nice if there was a reference set of glyphs. Like if in order to add a character to Unicode you had to also add a default glyph. Then at least if a

It would be nice if there was a reference set of glyphs. Like if in order to add a character to Unicode you had to also add a default glyph. Then at least if a font doesn't have that character the default could be displayed instead of a black box.

planteen 8y ago
That doesn't make sense for some complex (shaped) scripts where you have things like zero width joiners.
- grahamburger 8y ago
  Are there characters that really can't be drawn individually? Surely there's something better than a black box for pretty much any character.
  - squiggleblaz 8y ago
    Yes, I disagree that it doesn't make sense. You're not supposed to see a ZWJ, so the correct render of it is not visible. So even if you include it in your font - well, the correct thing for your font engine to do is to apply the semantics of it correctly and change the render of the surrounding characters.
    - planteen 8y ago
      Yes, but there are glyphs, especially in Indic languages, that have no representation in a presentation form in Unicode. If you are familiar with Arabic, each glyph has forms - isolated, beginning, medial, and final. Your "typical" Arabic string is composed of isolated code points, they go through a text shaper, and out come glyph indices that also have a Unicode code point associated with them. You do the same thing with an Indic language, except imagine that the glyph indices that come out have no corresponding Unicode code points. It's very surprising at first and some software can't handle these unassigned or "hidden" glyphs. So my point is: how much value would there be in requiring a representation of a small fraction of the glyphs (only those with Unicode code points, many of which are ZWJs) in a script in a standards document when potentially hundreds of forms are necessary after shaping to represent the language?
squiggleblaz 8y ago
When I'm running Linux/X, if the current font doesn't know a character it renders the character using another font on the system that does. So then it's just a matter of including a set of fonts that covers every character, and I think a reasonable attempt has been made to do that - although maybe that's based on the fonts I've chosen to install, since that's something that's moderately important to me. When I'm running Windows (for work) it only renders characters for the current font, and I get box instead of a character. (Traditionally at least; maybe this has changed? - it's not important to my work so I haven't really investigated, but as a feature it's so useful it's hard to believe it hasn't happened yet.) But as you can see this isn't a problem with Unicode but the configuration of your system. If it chooses to show you a character from another font, then that's good and convenient. Note that Windows support for emoji is significantly better. I think Gtk+3/Gnome apps and Firefox have improved significantly this year (wow, lots of color!), but they're still lagging.
- rspeer 8y ago
  > So then it's just a matter of including a set of fonts that covers every character Have you ever tried to literally do this? You won't succeed. The Google Noto font family is getting there, but I think they're only caught up with like Unicode 6, and we're on Unicode 11 now. There are some recently-added scripts that you won't find in any font. The Unicode tables render them in proprietary fonts that are obfuscated in the PDF, usually without even any information about how to buy them.
  - nneonneo 8y ago
    The list of font contributors can be found here: http://www.unicode.org/charts/fonts.html http://www.unicode.org/charts/fonts.html. Choice quote: > The Unicode Consortium currently uses over 390 different fonts to publish the code charts and figures for The Unicode Standard. The overwhelming majority of these fonts are specially tailored for this purpose and have been donated to the Consortium with a restricted license for use in documenting the standard. You might be able to reach out to the vendors listed and try to buy the font, but it seems the majority were produced only for Unicode's use.
deleted 8y ago
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planteen 8y ago

That doesn't make sense for some complex (shaped) scripts where you have things like zero width joiners.

grahamburger 8y ago
Are there characters that really can't be drawn individually? Surely there's something better than a black box for pretty much any character.
- squiggleblaz 8y ago
  Yes, I disagree that it doesn't make sense. You're not supposed to see a ZWJ, so the correct render of it is not visible. So even if you include it in your font - well, the correct thing for your font engine to do is to apply the semantics of it correctly and change the render of the surrounding characters.
  - planteen 8y ago
    Yes, but there are glyphs, especially in Indic languages, that have no representation in a presentation form in Unicode. If you are familiar with Arabic, each glyph has forms - isolated, beginning, medial, and final. Your "typical" Arabic string is composed of isolated code points, they go through a text shaper, and out come glyph indices that also have a Unicode code point associated with them. You do the same thing with an Indic language, except imagine that the glyph indices that come out have no corresponding Unicode code points. It's very surprising at first and some software can't handle these unassigned or "hidden" glyphs. So my point is: how much value would there be in requiring a representation of a small fraction of the glyphs (only those with Unicode code points, many of which are ZWJs) in a script in a standards document when potentially hundreds of forms are necessary after shaping to represent the language?

squiggleblaz 8y ago

When I'm running Linux/X, if the current font doesn't know a character it renders the character using another font on the system that does. So then it's just a matter of including a set of fonts that covers every character, and I think a reasonable attempt has been made to do that - although maybe that's based on the fonts I've chosen to install, since that's something that's moderately important to me. When I'm running Windows (for work) it only renders characters for the current font, and I get box instead of a character. (Traditionally at least; maybe this has changed? - it's not important to my work so I haven't really investigated, but as a feature it's so useful it's hard to believe it hasn't happened yet.) But as you can see this isn't a problem with Unicode but the configuration of your system. If it chooses to show you a character from another font, then that's good and convenient. Note that Windows support for emoji is significantly better. I think Gtk+3/Gnome apps and Firefox have improved significantly this year (wow, lots of color!), but they're still lagging.

rspeer 8y ago
> So then it's just a matter of including a set of fonts that covers every character Have you ever tried to literally do this? You won't succeed. The Google Noto font family is getting there, but I think they're only caught up with like Unicode 6, and we're on Unicode 11 now. There are some recently-added scripts that you won't find in any font. The Unicode tables render them in proprietary fonts that are obfuscated in the PDF, usually without even any information about how to buy them.
- nneonneo 8y ago
  The list of font contributors can be found here: http://www.unicode.org/charts/fonts.html http://www.unicode.org/charts/fonts.html. Choice quote: > The Unicode Consortium currently uses over 390 different fonts to publish the code charts and figures for The Unicode Standard. The overwhelming majority of these fonts are specially tailored for this purpose and have been donated to the Consortium with a restricted license for use in documenting the standard. You might be able to reach out to the vendors listed and try to buy the font, but it seems the majority were produced only for Unicode's use.

deleted 8y ago

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