🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <71384@apple.Apple.COM>, opstad@Apple.COM (David Opstad) writes:
> In article <26760@life.ai.mit.edu> bkph@wheat-chex.ai.mit.edu (Berthold K.P. Horn) writes:

>>Finally:  Let's hope that UNICODE with its 16-bit characters will help
>>resolve some of these problems.  Although, UNICODE is dead in the
>>water if it does not provide access to ligatures.  For there can be
>>no fine typesetting without ligatures.
 
> As I've said before, Unicode and ligatures are completely orthogonal issues.
> I have on my machine right now a Unicode font containing almost 1,000 glyphs,
> including scores of ligatures. The ligatures, like the rest of the
> typographic richness of this font, are accessed via a well-defined method
> that has *nothing* to do with the character encoding (i.e. Unicode).

And what is this magic method? If it involves, say, some system
call, then you have two problems: First, the system has to be
Unicode-knowledgable (in short, the majority of in situ operating
environments can't use it) and the line breaking software has to
be willing to interface with this system call. In the case of a
system like TeX (or any of the systems which use TeX's line
breaking mechanism), this is likely not a viable choice. TeX
needs to be able to work (internally) with ligatures as physical
glyphs. Unicode in this case could be workable as an input
scheme, but not as a useful coding scheme for fonts.
 
> Unicode encodes meaning. Ligatures are inappropriate in this context.

> Fonts encode appearance. Ligatures, swashes and everything else are very
> appropriate in this context.

In short then, you are saying that Unicode is not designed for,
and cannot be used for doing font encoding? Not that this is
ojectionable, but it should be made explicit that Unicode is only
a data scheme and not a scheme for fonts (much like, say, ASCII
vs. AdobeStandardEncoding). In which case, Unicode is not the
answer to this problem and is at best a distraction.

-dh

Don Hosek                  
dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu  
Quixote Digital Typography 
714-621-1291