For web page makers (Unicode vs. SS font)

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on 19 June 2000 Koontz John E wrote

> There is an alternative, which I have been meaning to look at. The road
> to hell is paved with uncompleted projects. This alternative is a scheme
> put forward by Bitstream and Netscape to support downloadable fonts.
> These fonts slow down the page, because they have to be downloaded, if not
> present in the browser environment, but they do get downloaded and used if
> they are missing. They are secure, so they can't be used locally except
> in conjunction with Web browsing. They are supported natively by Netscape
> browsers, and there is a plugin that gets automatically dowloaded into MS
> Internet Explorer that supports them there. The one glitch I know of so
> far is that making this plugin downloadable requires the support and
> cooperation of the people maintaining the Web server (not just the Web
> pages), at the distributing site.

I have played with the SS font and tried to use it as downloadable, but I
haven't been successful. It worked with other fonts with special characters
but not wit the SS font.

> Of course, if you are, say, using a PC browser on a system that has the
> Standard Siouan fonts installed, and browsing pages that are coded in
> these fonts (among others) you should see the pages in Standard Siouan
> characters. At least this is the theory. Jan has discovered some problem
> combinations, though I don't remember the specifics at the moment.

The problem was that the SS font had to be set in TOOLS/OPTIONS/FONTS (for
MS IE). After this it works just all right. Yet not only the siouan text but
all texts on all sites are displayed in the SS font and since it doesn't
look as "smooth" as other fonts on the screen, it is better to re-set the
TOOLS/OPTIONS/FONTS for, lets say, Times New Roman. Visiting such siouan
site thus requires constant setting and re-setting.
I had some reports that the setting wasn't necessary in Win NT and in
Netscape (although some Netscape users could not see the character at all).

> The advantage of this approach over the approach of representing each
> character as a gif file, which is what Shannon has set up, is that the
> html files use a single character to represent a character, instead of
> using a graphics file download instruction. Also, though I haven't tried
> and don't know the details, I'd think that the downloading might be
> faster.

Yes, I too am a bit skeptical as concerns the downloading speed of the gif
files in large text sites. And also the convenience of "typing" long texts
with the gif files (but I haven't taken a real close look at it).

> Unicode is missing precomposed combinations for things like vowel plus
> nasal hook plus accent.

There are other faults of Unicode - sites that use it cannot be searched for
words containing the special siouan characters. You simply can't type the
character into the "find-box". Such a site thus looses one of its most
relevant purposes. Shannon's gif files would not work for this either. But I
think the Standard Siouan font would - if one knows the characters' codes
and types them into the find-box.

> The problem with a Unicode web site is the problem with any Web site that
> uses other than the cross-section of standard Unix and Windows characters
> that the Web standard recognizes. People at sites without those
> characters can't see anything. For example, at a Unix site you can't see
> some of the fairly innocent things (s-hacek?) that Wayne Leman uses in his
> Cheyenne site, because those characters aren't available in the usual Unix
> set (in the US). What you see instead is a helpful blank. (Incidentally,
> WL is aware of this, but feels, reasonably, that most of his readers will
> be using Windows systems.)
> The problem is that though the poster of a Web pages gets to see it as
> intended fully populated with local fonts, the receiver can only see it
> that way of the receiver has all the same fonts. Web pages are rendered
> with the aid of browser-local fonts.

I have been working on a web site with siouan texts. At first I used John's
Standard Siouan font, but it required downloading, instaling and setting in
the browsers options (and even after that it would not work with all
browsers). I thought this number of steps would discourage most visitors. So
I have changed the site into Unicode. You can see the result on
www.inext.cz/siouan . I got reports that the special characters are well
seen by users of MS IE, but not always by those who use Netscape. I would be
interested in reports from your ends of the line.

>>From all that has been said it seems to me that the Standard Siouan font
would be the best solution if it is made automatically downloadable.

Jan F. Ullrich