Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!unido!ztivax!kap121
From: kap121@ztivax.UUCP (Thomas Oeser)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Language dependent application defaults
Summary: More about writing directions
Keywords: Localization, Application Defaults
Message-ID: <905@ztivax.UUCP>
Date: 21 Feb 90 11:45:31 GMT
References: <898@ztivax.UUCP> <3890@srava.sra.co.jp> <2803@bacchus.dec.com> <1462@sragwa.sra.co.jp>
Organization: Siemens AG in Munich, W-Germany
Lines: 43

in Article 13142 comp.windows.x Erik M. van der Poel writes
> > printing direction...)
> 
> There is some support for this in X already: a negative character
> width causes the next character to be printed to the left of the
> current character. Vertical printing is not directly supported,
> though. Top-to-bottom printing could be achieved by drawing the text
> one character at a time, in a vertical fashion. So one would need
> resources to specify vertical printing.
> 


The writing direction is proposed to be a property of the font
(see ISO 9541-1, Information processing - Text and office systems - Font
Information Interchange - Part 1: Architecture).

Since the bdf format contains already a lot of this stuff, things like
writing direction may be included, too (and recognized by the server...).

But apart of this discussion, I agree that choosing the font that supports
the language dependent set of glyphs, writing direction etc. is n o t supported
by catgets() (or other functions from this area).

BTW, this is still an open issue in the standardazations community to specify 
a complete chain from character encoding to character meaning, e.g. 0x31 is a 
"uppercase A" in the case of ISO 8859-1, and from the character meaning to a
particular glyph identifier in a font representing that meaning.

Thomas Oeser


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Disclaimer:
The opinions expressed are my own, and should not be attributed to anyone else
living or dead.
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