[B-Greek] RE: Comparing Unicode fonts

Stephen C. Carlson scarlson at mindspring.com
Mon Feb 7 21:23:58 EST 2005


At 09:28 AM 2/5/2005 +0100, Wieland Willker wrote:
>> Does anyone know of a Unicode Greek uncial font?
>
>There is probably none.
>And it would probably be just wasting time to create one. The advantage
>of Unicode is that documents can be shared with others even when they
>don't have exactly the same font. But when you are using an Uncial font,
>your partner MUST have exactly this font otherwise the information about
>the Uncial is lost. So you can equally well use one of the existing
>Uncial fonts. JMHO.

All my Greek going forward is represented in Unicode, which won't
work with existing non-Unicode fonts.  As long as there is any need
for an uncial font, there's no theoretical reason why it shouldn't
be in Unicode.

>Here I see one other problem of Unicode. When the text is formatted in a
>way that distances play a role, e.g. when working with Tabs etc. lines
>can break differently, especially when you are using e.g. the wide
>Palatino.
>So, when you have complex documents, it will remain that you have to
>have the same fonts.

If you care about presentation, then the need to have the
same fonts will remain--Unicode or not.  If you want to
exchange Greek text more easily, then Unicode is a good
solution.  There are situations, which you've outlined
in which data interchange is not important, but simply
because Unicode's big advantage is not felt does not mean
it is a negative.

The main net disadvantage of Unicode is an increase in
storage requirements, but with today's economics for
computer memories and increasingly so in bandwidth, that
is becoming less of a problem by the day.

Stephen 
-- 
Stephen C. Carlson                        mailto:scarlson at mindspring.com
Weblog:    http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/hypotyposeis/blogger.html
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words."  Shujing 2.35




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