A4422DAE@AWIUNI11.BITNET (Konrad Neuwirth) (09/29/90)
About the subject of the new fonts. Reading the last mail about the fonts having no accents at all, I should say that I am rather shocked. Coming from a language that relies on accented characters, it is hard for me to understand that you want to throw those right characters out. TeX educates us to go for quality, so why should we use second class umlauts? Umlauts are not, in fact, accented characters but characters on their own (if you care to look into those old lead things, they had their umlauts as distinct characters (which could even have a rather quite different shape than those characters unaccented). If you understand written german, look it up in `Das Buch des Setzers' by Genzmer). Also talking to people from sweden, they have the same problem, too. Especially with things like the ^"A or so (the A changes, believe me). So it *IS* necessary to have those things. We are not just PostScript corrupted. I am also somewhat dissapointed that the necesary ligatures like ch, ck and ft didn't make it into the font. Some other characters are missing, too, to make some reasonable typesetting. But then, I think we are talking about different characters! I am sorry to say the follwing that geralized, but the Americans always have a tendency to think that one (at best theirs) solution is good for every problem. The creators of the new scheme never claimed that it solves all the problems of all fonts of the latin family. It is a better tool for some languages like German, Swiss German, Polish, Hungarian, Swedish and so on, but it does not claim to be the best thing for every language. It also is not meant to replace CMR10 (the math characters are missing then), but to be used for text typesetting. And if you want to have a different layout, so then go forth and use it. Knuth gave us a tool to simplify all those things, so that maybe german typesetting, one day, will be correct again, using the right ligatures and the right uppercase letters and have real umlauts. Maybe we will create a font that does that, but we won't recreate it all in metafont. Virtual Fonts is the answer! Come on guys! You got to be more liberal than that (even if it is hard for americans. (set flame off). have a nice day, //konrad +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ As I'm not working for anybody, I can't be representing their opinion! Konrad Neuwirth Earn/BitNet: a4422dae@awiuni11 Postfach 646 VoiceNet: KONRAD!!!!!!(louder). 1100 Wien, Austria (Europe) Bloody BIX is too expensive.
dhosek@linus.claremont.edu (Hosek, Donald A.) (09/30/90)
In article <9009291501.AA02718@lilac.berkeley.edu>, A4422DAE@AWIUNI11.BITNET (Konrad Neuwirth) writes... >About the subject of the new fonts. > Reading the last mail about the fonts having no accents at all, >I should say that I am rather shocked. Coming from a language that >relies on accented characters, it is hard for me to understand that >you want to throw those right characters out. TeX educates us to >go for quality, so why should we use second class umlauts? Umlauts >are not, in fact, accented characters but characters on their own >(if you care to look into those old lead things, they had their >umlauts as distinct characters (which could even have a rather quite >different shape than those characters unaccented). If you understand >written german, look it up in `Das Buch des Setzers' by Genzmer). [etc.] >//konrad Well I personally have no problem with providing pre-accented characters. I've been saying for years that it's the only way to get quality typesetting (although there are cases, e.g., Hebrew and Arabic where floating accents are a necessity) for latin typesetting. However, speaking from the perspective of a font designer, somebody tell me what character code to use for the ct ligature. How about long-s and all its associated ligatures. What about the extra ligatures I need for my Italic typeface? It's not that the TeX world has become PostScript-corrupted, they've become TeX-corrupted. I'd like to see two standard latin encodings that will be far more inclusive and leave (at least) 16 vacant glyphs for special typographic features. Otherwise, I'm not going to bother with that coding scheme for my typefaces at all. -dh --- Don Hosek TeX, LaTeX, and Metafont support, consulting dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu installation and production work. dhosek@ymir.bitnet Free Estimates. uunet!jarthur!ymir Phone: 714-625-0147 finger dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu for more info
phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (10/01/90)
I read and hear these things: 1. Scalable fonts are bad, particularly for small fonts, because the proportions do need to change somewhat with actual size for proper readability. 2. Umlauts (and quite likely others) are more than just mere letters with "things" stuck on them. Solving these problems is not easy either. Treating umlauts like accented letters is not the best way to go, but it does solve the immediate problem which is a total lack of such characters in the American character sets. However, because this approach has solved some other problems as well, I do not want to see it go away until ALL of the problems it solves are solved by other means. Umlauts for Americans is just one of them. One of the reasons I like TeX is that it allows me to typeset text in the Esperanto language as well as many others. The approach of treating these letters as accented letters made it possible (albeit not perfect) to have these letters without someone having to create the fonts for them AND TO MAKE SURE IT IS DONE FOR ALL LANGUAGES. Of course it is not yet even close to perfect. Cyrillic is missing. And languages like Arabic, Japanese, Hindu, Georgian, etc., cannot yet be typeset. A lot of work is due. When the work is done, however, just be sure not to removed the facility that exists now until you can prove that the work is absolutely complete. This is not likely for quite some time. Now if you have some scalable PostScript fonts for ALL the possible letter shapes in all the languages whose alphabets is based on the Roman alphabet, then I am interested. If it omits one or two languages, the value of it is diminished very greatly. --Phil Howard, KA9WGN-- | Individual CHOICE is fundamental to a free society <phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> | no matter what the particular issue is all about.
Damian.Cugley@prg.ox.ac.uk (Damian Cugley) (10/01/90)
From: Konrad Neuwirth <A4422DAE@AWIUNI11.BITNET> Message-Id: <9009291501.AA02718@lilac.berkeley.edu> > X-Unparsable-Date: Sat, 29 Sep 90 16:54:58 MEZ > Reading the last [article] about the fonts having no accents at all (a) I'm not against accents (b) I'm not against having accented characters as separate glyphs (c) I do think trying to fit every accented letter used by every language ever existing into a font is just unworkable I would suggest having separate fonts per language/language group with a smallish number of accented letters & the facilities to make good accents of other letters for short quotes in other languages. Remember, I use an accented language, too (there are English words with accents.) The proposed Latin8 encoding isn't *completely* terrible, it just has a few problems, which just happen to be mainly where it attempts to be more PostScript-like - e.g., ASCII circumflex, straight quotes etc. Thus my assertion that PostScript was rotting people's brains. I am more annoyed with the inclusion of straight quotes, ASCII circumflex, visible space etc. than with the accented letters. > I am also somewhat dissapointed that the necesary ligatures like > ch, ck and ft didn't make it into the font. Some other characters are > missing, too, [needed] to make some reasonable typesetting. But then, > I think we are talking about different characters! One of the things I am griping about is the apparant obsession with cramming 256 characters into a "standard" font encoding which leaves no room for features like more ligatures - e.g., German ch, ck, or more eccentric ones in display fonts. Which ligatures are wanted **probably** depends on what language is being used; different countries *do* have different traditions. > I am sorry to say the following that generalized, but the > [anglophones] always have a tendency to think that one (at best > theirs) solution is good for every problem. That's interesting because it was me that was ranting about the proposed "one solution" to the problems of different languages having different accented characters. (Maybe because it doesn't include the Esperanto accents!)
teexdwu@ioe.lon.ac.uk (DOMINIK WUJASTYK) (10/11/90)
In article <1048100005@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu writes: >One of the reasons I like TeX is that it allows me to typeset text in the >Esperanto language as well as many others. The approach of treating these >letters as accented letters made it possible (albeit not perfect) to have >these letters without someone having to create the fonts for them AND TO >MAKE SURE IT IS DONE FOR ALL LANGUAGES. This is a very important point indeed, and must not be overlooked by those people struggling with the character set problem. Any character set, even one with pre-composed accents for Swedish or whatever, really should have the separate accents too, for use with \accent, so that unusual words can be dealt with. And unusual words are very usual. I too came to TeX partly because it could typeset all the Indic words I use that have macrons over the vowels and underdots under many consonants, s-acute, and so on. >Of course it is not yet even close to perfect. Cyrillic is missing. And >languages like Arabic, Japanese, Hindu, Georgian, etc., cannot yet be >typeset. TeX is more perfect than you think. I would guess that you are not a member of the TeX Users Group, or you would know from the excellent journal TUGboat that all the above languages and scripts can be typeset by TeX already. (If by "Hindu" you mean "Devanagari", and by "Georgian" you mean "extended Cyrillic".) Phil makes an extremely important point. Text fonts that omit floating accents will not be widely adopted, mark my words. Dominik