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Groups > comp.lang.python > #5350

Re: unicode by default

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On Fri, 13 May 2011 14:53:50 -0500, harrismh777 wrote:

>     The unicode consortium is very careful to make sure that thousands
> of symbols have a unique code point (that's great !) but how do these
> thousands of symbols actually get displayed if there is no font
> consortium?   Are there collections of 'standard' fonts for unicode that I
> am not aware?  Is there a unix linux package that can be installed that
> drops at least 'one' default standard font that will be able to render all
> or 'most' (whatever I mean by that) code points in unicode?

Using the original meaning of "font" (US) or "fount" (commonwealth), you
can't have a single font cover the whole of Unicode. A font isn't a random
set of glyphs, but a set of glyphs in a common style, which can only
practically be achieved for a specific alphabet.

You can bundle multiple fonts covering multiple repertoires into a single
TTF (etc) file, but there's not much point.

In software, the term "font" is commonly used to refer to some ad-hoc
mapping between codepoints and glyphs. This typically works by either
associating each specific font with a specific repertoire (set of
codepoints), or by simply trying each font in order until one is found
with the correct glyph.

This is a sufficiently common problem that the FontConfig library exists
to simplify a large part of it.

>   Is this a Python issue at all?

No.

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Thread

unicode by default harrismh777 <harrismh777@charter.net> - 2011-05-11 16:37 -0500
  Re: unicode by default Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2011-05-11 16:09 -0600
    Re: unicode by default harrismh777 <harrismh777@charter.net> - 2011-05-11 17:51 -0500
      Re: unicode by default "John Machin" <sjmachin@lexicon.net> - 2011-05-12 09:32 +1000
        Re: unicode by default harrismh777 <harrismh777@charter.net> - 2011-05-11 20:22 -0500
          Re: unicode by default MRAB <python@mrabarnett.plus.com> - 2011-05-12 03:31 +0100
            Re: unicode by default Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2011-05-12 03:16 +0000
              Re: unicode by default harrismh777 <harrismh777@charter.net> - 2011-05-11 22:44 -0500
                Re: unicode by default Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2011-05-12 00:12 -0400
                Re: unicode by default harrismh777 <harrismh777@charter.net> - 2011-05-12 01:43 -0500
                Re: unicode by default "John Machin" <sjmachin@lexicon.net> - 2011-05-12 14:14 +1000
                Re: unicode by default Benjamin Kaplan <benjamin.kaplan@case.edu> - 2011-05-11 21:14 -0700
                Re: unicode by default "John Machin" <sjmachin@lexicon.net> - 2011-05-12 14:41 +1000
                Re: unicode by default harrismh777 <harrismh777@charter.net> - 2011-05-12 01:14 -0500
                Re: unicode by default TheSaint <nobody@nowhere.net.no> - 2011-05-12 20:40 +0800
            Re: unicode by default Ben Finney <ben+python@benfinney.id.au> - 2011-05-12 14:07 +1000
              Re: unicode by default harrismh777 <harrismh777@charter.net> - 2011-05-12 01:31 -0500
                Re: unicode by default "John Machin" <sjmachin@lexicon.net> - 2011-05-12 17:58 +1000
                Re: unicode by default Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2011-05-12 10:17 -0600
                Re: unicode by default jmfauth <wxjmfauth@gmail.com> - 2011-05-12 23:28 -0700
                Re: unicode by default harrismh777 <harrismh777@charter.net> - 2011-05-13 14:53 -0500
                Re: unicode by default Robert Kern <robert.kern@gmail.com> - 2011-05-13 15:18 -0500
                Re: unicode by default Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2011-05-13 21:41 -0400
                Re: unicode by default harrismh777 <harrismh777@charter.net> - 2011-05-14 02:41 -0500
                Re: unicode by default jmfauth <wxjmfauth@gmail.com> - 2011-05-14 03:26 -0700
                Re: unicode by default Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2011-05-14 16:26 -0400
                Re: unicode by default Ben Finney <ben+python@benfinney.id.au> - 2011-05-15 09:47 +1000
                Re: unicode by default Nobody <nobody@nowhere.com> - 2011-05-14 09:34 +0100
                Re: unicode by default Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2011-05-12 16:42 -0400
                Re: unicode by default Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2011-05-12 16:25 -0600
          Re: unicode by default "John Machin" <sjmachin@lexicon.net> - 2011-05-12 13:54 +1000
  Re: unicode by default Benjamin Kaplan <benjamin.kaplan@case.edu> - 2011-05-11 15:34 -0700

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