Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!decwrl!shelby!neon!kaufman
From: kaufman@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Marc T. Kaufman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: Bizarre problem with a large math font
Keywords: font, large characters
Message-ID: <1990Jul26.071001.12724@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 26 Jul 90 07:10:01 GMT
References: <1990Jul23.161753.13159@ra.src.umd.edu> <1990Jul24.035846.18950@Neon.Stanford.EDU> <1990Jul26.050218.22469@ra.src.umd.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Lines: 33

In article <1990Jul26.050218.22469@ra.src.umd.edu> josip@ra.src.umd.edu (Josip Loncaric) writes:

>... finally, if
>Mac is designed to give users flexibility of using all kinds of fonts, 
>hardcoding 0x20 into the operating system as "space" does not seem very
>smart to me...

[I can't speak to the missing "big" characters, except to say that they must
be renderable SOMEWHERE, or they would not have been put in the font in the
first place]

About the space.  We really can't tell whether the 0x20 character is blank or
has a graphic just by looking at the FOND, or width table, or anything else
available to the average text handling program.  When setting TEXT, it is
often necessary to be able to distinguish the space character, so that trailing
blanks can be supressed for right justification, and so that extra space can
be added for full justification.  Once you have made the decision that 0x20 is
to be treated specially for that purpose, you can't very well use it for
special graphics.  There are 230+ characters available for graphic use in an
Apple font.  If that isn't enough, you can go to 2-byte characters as the
Asian fonts do.  BTW: even the 2-byte fonts stay away from 0x20 graphics.
And you can make up as many different 230 character fonts as you like, and
mix them all in a document.

The only situation in which I would agree with your comment on the use of
0x20 is on a monospaced display (can you say PC?), where there is no particular
advantage to being able to adjust interword spacing.  Even there, TEXT editors
would likely pick 0x20 as a word-break character (rather than, say, 0x41).

Summary:  attempting to use 0x20 as anything OTHER than a "space" does not seem
very smart to me...

Marc Kaufman (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu)