[WEB4LIB] Re: Arial MS Unicode Font

[Andrew Cunningham]

Hi all, again

Andrew Cunningham wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> Howard Pasternack wrote:
> 
>>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.

as a follow up:

if you're using Netscape 4.x then you'll need a pan-CJK font like 
Bitstream CyberCJK set as your "Unicode" font in the browser's preferences.

If you're using Netscape6/Mozilla or Internet Explorer 5+ you are using 
a web browser that has some form of font-linking technology to support 
unicode web pages. The browsers have been designed to use fonts 
representing subsets of unicode rather than a complete Unicode font. Not 
to mention as far as I know a complete unicode font does not exist.

I'll briefly discuss Netscape6/Mozilla.

In theory you're web based catalogue pages (either HTML, XHTML or XML) 
should include language tagging (ie either lang="ja" or xml:lang="ja" 
attributes for example). They should also include directionality where 
necessary. In theory, for a unicode based library catalogue this should 
be a no-brainer for a vendor to implement. [Personally, I think every 
LMS is substandard. Still waiting for the one with half decent language 
support.]

In the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0:

"4.1 Clearly identify changes in the natural language of a document's 
text and any  text equivalents (e.g., captions). [Priority 1]
For example, in HTML use the "lang" attribute. In XML, use "xml:lang"."
[http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/#gl-abbreviated-and-foreign]

Basically this means that in a web accessible library catalogue, in the 
html results page of a search, all language changes should be marked. So 
if you're catalogue is English based and your results html pages has 
chinese or japanese text in it, then to meet WAI priority level 1 (ie 
have a basic web accessible site) the markup in the page needs to 
indicate the change in language.

So assuming a utf-8 web page has the appropriate language tags: ja, 
zh-CN, zh-TW, ko, etc. Mozilla will use the font preferences the user 
has specified for those langauges. (if the developer didn't specify fonts).

Having a look at 
http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/modules/libpref/src/win/winpref.js

we see that the default fonts for a installation of Mozilla are:

Japanese:

pref("font.name.serif.ja", "ＭＳ Ｐ明朝"); // "MS PMincho"
pref("font.name.sans-serif.ja", "ＭＳ Ｐゴシック"); // "MS PGothic"
pref("font.name.monospace.ja", "ＭＳ ゴシック"); // "MS Gothic"
pref("font.name-list.serif.ja", "MS PMincho, MS PGothic, MS Mincho, MS 
Gothic");
pref("font.name-list.sans-serif.ja", "MS PGothic, MS PMincho, MS Gothic, 
MS Mincho");
pref("font.name-list.monospace.ja", "MS Gothic, MS Mincho, MS PGothic, 
MS PMincho");

Korean:

pref("font.name.serif.ko", "바탕"); // "Batang"
pref("font.name.sans-serif.ko", "굴림"); // "Gulim"
pref("font.name.monospace.ko", "굴림체"); // "GulimChe"
pref("font.name-list.serif.ko", "Batang, Gulim");
pref("font.name-list.sans-serif.ko", "Gulim");
pref("font.name-list.monospace.ko", "GulimChe");

Simplified Chinese (taged as zh-CN)

104 pref("font.name.serif.zh-CN", "宋体"); //MS Song
105 pref("font.name.sans-serif.zh-CN", "宋体"); //MS Song
106 pref("font.name.monospace.zh-CN", "宋体"); //MS Song
107 pref("font.name-list.serif.zh-CN", "MS Song, SimSun");
108 pref("font.name-list.sans-serif.zh-CN", "MS Song, SimSun");
109 pref("font.name-list.monospace.zh-CN", "MS Song, SimSun");

Traditional Chinese (tagged as zh-TW):

pref("font.name.serif.zh-TW", "細明體"); // "MingLiU"
pref("font.name.sans-serif.zh-TW", "細明體"); // "MingLiU"
pref("font.name.monospace.zh-TW", "細明體"); // "MingLiU"
pref("font.name-list.serif.zh-TW", "MingLiU");
pref("font.name-list.sans-serif.zh-TW", "MingLiU");
pref("font.name-list.monospace.zh-TW", "MingLiU");

IE also has ways of associating scripts in unicode with particular 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/