[WEB4LIB] Re: Arial MS Unicode Font

[Howard Pasternack]

I'll post a less than amusing anecdote about Netscape 6.2 and a Unicode 
webpac.  Innovative Interfaces outputs Unicode at port 1080 for webpacs 
which are Unicode enabled.  Netscape 6.2 is unable to access these webpacs 
because of some built-in security limitations which prevent Netscape 6.2 
from accessing this port.  A Netscape message appears, amazingly written in 
plain English, which indicates that access to the port number has been 
prohibited for security reasons, although the message does not really 
indicate that it is Netscape which is doing the prohibiting.  The last time 
I checked there did not seem to be any information as to which sequences of 
ports Netscape was banning. Nor is it possible to turn off this hidden 
feature. -- Howard

At 10:17 PM 8/22/2002 -0700, Andrew Cunningham wrote:
>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/