Re: Fonts for distribution

[Clytie Siddall <clytie riverland net au>]

On 09/03/2006, at 11:51 PM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:

> Making fonts that have glyphs for multiple scripts is in fact not
> recommended in Linux.  Having separate fonts for different
> scripts have various benefits.  Simply, don't do that.

I don't know how useful it is to compare Linux with Mac OSX (UNIX),  
but I use Lucida Grande all the time _because_ it covers such a wide  
range of characters. Not having to change font when I change  
languages is a major convenience, even though changing font is only a  
couple of keystrokes or clicks in OSX.

I have specialist fonts for Vietnamese, and for some other languages,  
but I only use them when I'm preparing documents for print. Ludida  
Grande does an excellent job of my language, and of many others. So I  
wanted the same convenience for users of our distributions,  
especially those who may not know how to install or setup specialist  
fonts.

I really think, for most users, having a general-purpose font  
installed with the distro, which will handle a large range of glyphs,  
will make our translations more accessible. People still have the  
option of using other fonts, and our translations aren't restricted  
by the user's skill-level in managing fonts.

from Clytie (vi-VN, Vietnamese free-software translation team / nhÃm  
Viát hÃa phán mám tá do)
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/vi-VN