Re: gdk_set_locale

[Pablo Saratxaga <pablo mandrakesoft com>]

Kaixo!

On Mon, Jan 17, 2000 at 08:44:26AM +0800, Steve Underwood wrote:

> > 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
 
> I think there is an obvious basis for the first basic global Unicode font.

No, no, that has been discussed endless times; a unicode font (that is all
into a single file) has almost no chances at all to exist. THere will allways
be some glyphs out of it (remember unicode standard is still evolving),
and more important: it will be ugly ! as different cultures have different
expectations on the global look and feel of some glyphs (the vietnamese
accents or the han ideographs come to mind as one of such cases).

On the other hand, local, hig quality fonts will be available (and are
available) for given glyph collections.
So the user must have the possibility to define the best combinaison
of such glyph collections; in particular if he wants to override some glyphs
of a unicode font with others from another he must be able to do so quite
easily.

> 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.

Such a default font can be useful; but it is onyl that: a poor default font.
Allmost anyone will use other fotns, better suited to their needs.

> Steve

-- 
Ki ça vos våye bén,
Pablo Saratxaga

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