Re: Unicode Fonts and Vera (was: Encoding problem with Azerbaijani translations of ISO-3166 names)

[Dafydd Harries <daf muse 19inch net>]

Ar 04/02/2004 am 16:48, ysgrifennodd Metin Amiroff:
> That's a great idea. I very think that Bitsream Fonts do look really good
> but they lack unicode. It would be nice if a TTF fonts junkie with the
> help of native speakers could extend that to the level to
> include Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew and even Greek. 
> I think the proprietary fonts like Lucida Sans Unicode and
> Arial Unicode MS can help with the glyph layouts here a lot.

This would, indeed be nice. It would probably be a lot of work. I think
it can be difficult to design glyphs for characters which you are not
familiar with, though.

> I once managed to modify Vera fonts and added Schwa
> character to them to meet our needs but I think the topic
> here is not only about TTF fonts and I am not such a 
> professional in this field. Also we need console fonts
> and monospace TTFs too. We had a conversation
> about the unicode console fonts with Pablo Saratxaga
> in the past and it came to the result that we need a good
> console font creator for that job, as current unicode
> console fonts we are using are his modifications made by hand.

I'm not sure that a professional font designer is required. Just look at
the work Danilo has done in creating almost 100 Cyrillic glyphs!

Any font design that we do may not be up to professional quality, but:

 - they may still be very good
 - less-than-perfect glyphs are better than no glyphs

Also, Vera gives us a great starting point, at least for characters in
the Latin script or similar to Latin characters - it is so much less
work than it would be starting from scratch. And Vera is a very nice set
of fonts.

I'm afraid I don't know anything about console fonts.

> >and there's a FreeFonts project on Savannah 
> 
> Yes, I am aware of that project. Their fonts have a very
> good glyph range but lack a little polish in look and kerning.
> I think they will impove in time. I alredy use them as monospaced
> unicode fonts and they do a really good job. But not yet for
> the interfaces.
> 
> > Can I count you in to help us (Daf, myself) there with Azerbaijani?
> 
> Of course. Actually there is very little to add to fonts to support
> Azerbaijani. A small 'Schwa' letter which is a 180 degrees rotated
> small 'e' and its capital letter with the same aspects. I can send you
> their unicode codes but it can be easily found with gucharmap.

This soudns like a fun challenge. This is going somewhere on my list of
things to do sometime. :)

> >(hear that Daf? ;).
> 
> I hope he does :)

I hear you!

-- 
Dafydd