🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <ISHIKAWA.93Jan22200347@ds5200.personal-media.co.jp> of comp.std.internat,
  ishikawa@personal-media.co.jp writes:
> I just need some clarification or opinions from netnews readers.
> In article <1jlngtINNqnk@life.ai.mit.edu> glenn@muesli.ai.mit.edu (Glenn A. Adams) writes:
> 
>    Keep in mind that there is no necessary relation between a 16-bit character
>    encoding and a 16-bit font...
> 
> Is the last statement understood by many netnews readers, and is it
> shared by UNICODE proponents? I had a vague understanding about this,
> and yet it was a revelation to read such a clear statement.
> 

This is indeed shared by UNICODE proponents, at least it better be!
There are scripts within UNICODE, such as Arabic, that *cannot* be
represented 1:1 between UNICODE points and glyphs (although there *is*
a set of glyphs in the Compatibility Zone, it only covers the basic
Arabic language, not the complete coverage of the script.)   Arabic
characters can have up to four forms: standalone, initial, medial and
final, plus that some ligatures are apparently mandatory.  In
addition, there are diacritical marks to be accounted for, just as in
Latin script.