[WEB4LIB] Re: Arial MS Unicode Font

[Howard Pasternack]

A couple of comments about Arial MS Unicode. The great advantage of this 
font is that it is in fact Unicode and that it supports a great variety of 
glyphs in various Western and Asian languages.  With multi-character opacs 
it works very well, especially when one record is in Korean, and a 
scholarly work about the same topic might be in Japanese. The fonts 
distributed with the Global IMEs do not provide the same functionality, and 
in the case of opacs which output in Unicode, the fonts do not even display 
all the glyphs correctly.  So, they really are not a 
substitute.  Bitstream, has also stopped distributing its Unicode 
font.  So, the only real alternatives are the commercial products.

The issue is really not one of configuring an indiividual workstation in 
the Library.  That is a fairly simple task.  The issue is assisting a user 
outside of the library to configure a PC to read non-Western scripts output 
the library.  Many opacs, my own included, provided a help screen which 
directed the user to download the Microsoft font and to configure the 
browser accordingly.  The instructions were simple and easy to follow for a 
user with modest technical skills.  However, the links are now dead and a 
substitute is not at hand.

The problem will disappear eventually as more machines upgrade to XP or get 
replaced.  But for the moment it is there.  My own institution will be 
looking at site licensing NJStar.  -- Howard

At 04:11 PM 8/20/2002 -0700, Andrew Cunningham wrote:
>Hi
>
>Calvin Hsu wrote:
> > Please note the version number below for Global IME to work:
> > "beginning with Communicator 4.72, Netscape supports Global IME... "
> >
> > This is taken from a Netscape article:
> > http://wp.netscape.com/eng/intl/gimesupport.html
> >
>
>As Calvin notes, Netscape Communicator 4.72+ works with the Global IME.
>
>Global IME 5.02
>http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/iebuild/ime5_win32/en/ime5_win32.htm
>
>There is a version of each Global IME that comes bundled with the IE
>language pack (the fonts et al), you could down load these getting an
>IME and fonts.
>
>Andrew
>
>
>
>--
>Andrew Cunningham
>Multilingual  Technical Officer
>OPT, Vicnet
>State Library of Victoria
>Australia
>
>andrewc at vicnet.net.au
>
>Ph: +61-3-8664-7001
>Fax: +61-3-9639-2175
>
>http://home.vicnet.net.au/~andrewc/
>http://www.openroad.net.au/