Re: gdk_set_locale

[Steve Underwood <steveu coppice org>]

Pablo Saratxaga wrote:

> Kaixo!
>
> On Sat, Jan 15, 2000 at 11:31:18AM -0500, Owen Taylor wrote:
>
> [...]
> > If the font specified does not contain all the characters in the
> > string, then fallbacks will automatically be provided, and there
> > will also be standard aliases such as "sans", "serif", "fixed", that
> > can be customized by the vendor, system administrator and user.
>
> In addition to fallbacks, and before them; there should be the possibility
> to create "virtual fonts".
> Often glyphs of some fonts go very well together, but the fonts have
> different names. It would be nice to allow the user to make some aliases.
> Eg: I would prefer, when the font specified is "Bodoni", to be able to
> specify ".VnBodoni" as a the font to use for vietnamese chars; rather
> than the default sans serif (Helvetica most likely)

I think there is an obvious basis for the first basic global Unicode font. Times
Roman is the traditional font for English language newspapers. Other Latin
language newspapers seem to use a similar font. Around the world, newspapers all
seems to have a basic common font for their particular language. Just combine the
"standard newspaper" font from every language and you have a workable meaningful
global Unicode font. Since these fonts are all widely used, there should be
computer versions widely (and probably freely) available, which can be merged
into the new font - The Times Global.

Steve