Re: Unicode console font

[Thomas Chan <thomas@atlas.datexx.com>]

On Mon, 13 Sep 1999, Markus Kuhn wrote:

> The PSF format is obviously highly specialized towards the needs of
> the old VGA text mode. Since the Linux console runs now in graphics
> mode, may be we should get rid of PSF and define a more powerful
> format.
>
>   - support for combining character, not only by simple overstriking,
>     but also by allowing some offset. In other words, I want the
>     diaresis over the "a" to be 2 pixels lower than over the "A",
>     therefore there should be a way to add some "combining_shift(0,-2)"
>     attribute to the "a" character to make this happen.

I think this is not just an ideal, but neccessary for the complexity and
number of diacritics that can be used with IPA (International Phonetic
Alphabet) or Vietnamese.  (See U+0300 - U+036F)

 
> It is a crucial step to understand that style variants are better handled
> within one single font file as opposed to having several different
> font files. This is because some style options apply only to certain
> parts of unicode. For instance, the upright/italic option is of no

This is done to a limited extent with .ttc (TrueType Collection) files
already; a CJK font could have one set of CJK characters (fixed width)
with multiple sets of Latin letters (e.g., fixed width vs. proportional).


> convern to block graphics and Han character, while the simplified vs.
> traditional Chinese style option is of no concern to the
> Latin/Greek/Cyrillic characters. Style variants that are valid across

The CJK style variation (or whatever it'll be called in the final version)
should be named by locale.  The "simplified Chinese" vs. "traditional
Chinese" distinction is a misnomer, unless it's being used as a synonym
for the zh_CN and zh_TW locales respectively.

One character appears in three levels of complexity/simplicity, with
different codepoints:

U+61C9 is the fullform ("traditional Chinese") version, used in Taiwan
       (zh_TW) and Hong Kong (zh_HK); also the pre-WWII Japanese (ja_JP)
       version
U+5E94 for the mainland Chinese simplification ("simplified Chinese"),
       used in China (zh_CN)
U+5FDC for the Japanese post-WWII simplification, used in Japan (ja_JP)

http://charts.unicode.org/unihan/unihan.acgi$61C9
http://charts.unicode.org/unihan/unihan.acgi$5E94
http://charts.unicode.org/unihan/unihan.acgi$5FDC

There's also a quote somewhere in Lunde's _CJKV Information Procesing_
(1998) book that "simplified" vs. "traditional" is locale-dependent.


>   - major style variations (serif vs. sans serif)

Ditto for CJK fonts: kai, ming/min, cao/sou, hei/gothic, etc.

 
Thomas Chan
tc31@cornell.edu

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