Don,
That's a good question. I think (hope) the set-of-fonts question is
orthogonal to the set-of-glyphs question.
In XHTML-Print, the set-of-fonts question is handled by the statement in
CSS [see Jim's email] that a user agent should support five generic names
(however, I will buy you a beverage of your choice if you can tell me what
"fantasy" is actually used for). But, I find nothing in CSS that tells me
which particular Unicode values will be successfully rendered by the user
agent.
If we had a set of Unicode-based repertoires, maybe something like
PWG-Latin-Basic, PWG-Latin-Extended, PWG-Cyrillic, PWG-Japanese,
PWG-Symbols, etc. then XHTML-Print could refer to them and say something
like:
A complying printer must successfully render each of the codepoints
from the repertoires PWG-Latin-Basic and PWG-Symbols. For the codepoints
in PWG-Latin-Basic, the rendered glyph should be visibly different in each
of the generic fonts Serif, Sans Serif, Monospace, and Cursive. For a
Symbol it is acceptable for a complying printer to render it the same way
in all fonts.
But:
1. This is just one solution; I don't want to prejudice the discussion.
2. It would be better to select existing repertoires from somewhere rather
than invent our own.
-E.
------------------------------------------
Elliott Bradshaw
Director, Software Engineering
Oak Technology Imaging Group
781 638-7534
don at lexmark.co
m To: ElliottBradshaw at oaktech.com
cc: pwg at pwg.org
10/25/2002 Subject: Re: PWG-ANNOUNCE> Character repertoires
09:41 AM in printers
Elliott:
Would you envision this to include a set of mandatory fonts or font
families or just a list of mandatory charactor sets (groups of glyphs)?
**********************************************
Don Wright don at lexmark.com
Member, IEEE SA Standards Board
PatCom Chair, SCC Liaison
Member, IEEE-ISTO Board of Directors
f.wright at ieee.org / f.wright at computer.org
Director, Alliances & Standards
Lexmark International
740 New Circle Rd
Lexington, Ky 40550
859-825-4808 (phone) 603-963-8352 (fax)
**********************************************
ElliottBradshaw at oaktech.com@pwg.org on 10/21/2002 01:00:51 PM
Sent by: owner-pwg-announce at pwg.org
To: pwg-announce at pwg.org
cc:
Subject: PWG-ANNOUNCE> Character repertoires in printers
Folks,
As we discussed in Santa Fe, I am interested in the possibility of defining
standard printer character repertoires for interoperability.
For discussion, a draft charter of a hypothetical working group follows:
<charter>
In traditional printing environments, clients rely on font downloads when
they are not sure a given character is embedded in the printer. As
printing moves to small clients, downloading may not be an option and
clients have a need to know what characters are available in a given
device.
The purpose of this group is to:
1. Survey existing methods for indicating available characters, such as
those used in the Bluetooth BPP
2. Define needs for printing character repertoires, considering such
factors as country locations and wingding-type symbols
3. Using Unicode, select or define a list of useful repertoires for
printing
4. Recommend a basic repertoire for inclusion in any printer that supports
embedded Unicode-accessable characters
5. Propose an extension to the PWG Semantic Model for obtaining the
character repertoires available in a printer
6. Work with UPnP and other groups to add repertoire support as needed
</charter>
Before proceeding, I would like any and all feedback on these questions:
1. Is this a problem worth solving? (vs. vendor-specific solutions)
2. Should it be treated as part of XHTML-Print, UPnP, or some other group?
(as opposed to a separate working group)
3. Who is interested in participarting, as author or reviewer?
If there is sufficient interest I will prepare a more complete proposal.
Thanks,
Elliott
------------------------------------------
Elliott Bradshaw
Director, Software Engineering
Oak Technology Imaging Group
781 638-7534