3 ms·
Low-end hardware in 1995 was something like i386 with 1 Mb RAM, meaning that just a modern Unicode font would consume most of the memory available to a program,
by ivan_gammel 3y ago
Low-end hardware in 1995 was something like i386 with 1 Mb RAM, meaning that just a modern Unicode font would consume most of the memory available to a program, probably leaving no enough space for the rendering code (which is not small by standards of that time). In 2nd half of 1990s I still maintained a classroom with 15 IBM PC XTs, which were still doing their jobs (our most modern hardware were Pentiums with 16 Mb RAM IIRC).
- benj111 3y ago>modern Unicode font That isn't unicode though. That's a font. You can have bitmap unicode fonts if you want. Let's put it this way. Say you have a unicode aware library and only ever use the ASCII compatible codes. You aren't using more space for fonts. If you want to read a Chinese document, yes you would need to then install Chinese fonts. That would take space yes. But it's possible. If you only speak Chinese that's something you have to deal with. Could you have a font for every unicode point at the same time, probably not, but most people don't need to read most code points most of the time.