Re: All languages are equally fit

On Sep 29, 10:24 am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Tue, 29 Sep 2009 05:14:08 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
<gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx>: in sci.lang:

On Sep 29, 3:55 am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:35:49 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
<gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx>: in sci.lang:

Operating systems do not provide glyphs. Fonts provide glyphs.

Yes. In this case, I assume an OS to include the fonts that are there
without post-installing them.

(a) Why would you assume such a thing?

Because since about 1991 that's how I have observed the real world to
be behaving. Perhaps you got your OS'es delivered without any
pre-installed fonts? Live and learn.

Early computers had the basic ASCII range (0-127) built in. The
typography was determined strictly by the printer hardware. Miguel
Civil (the Sumerologist) hooked up a Selectric typewriter to his TRS
box.

My first computer (Kaypro 4/84) had a daisy-wheel printer.

My second computer had a dot-matrix (8-dot, IIRC) printer.

I don't remember whether I used the same printer with my third
computer, which was an early "portable."

My fourth computer was a 1992 Macintosh, provided by OUP so I could
produce WWS, because DOS could still not deal with typography. The
system included a laser printer.

I now use a PC, thanks to my employer, who put one in my house, though
no longer that same one. Microsoft adopted Apple's approach to
graphics and typography, eventually.

MS products come with a fairly large range of fonts -- the vast
majority of which are "display fonts" that are of no use whatsoever to
me. MS's range of fonts is far more than adequate for the vast
majority of their customers, even those who might need to write to
South Asia or East Asia or Thailand (though not the rest of Southeast
Asia).

(b) Why would you drive all the type-manufacturers out of business,
let alone the hobbyists who create fonts for fun?

Do I? It's allright ifthey earn money making fonts, but I rarely
needed them. If I do, maybe I'll be willing to pay for them.

You think fonts should be provided by OS-makers.

(c) What about scripts the OS-makers happened not to have
thought of yet?

Extra post-installed fonts will then come in handy. But that doesn't
contradict my statement "Vista doesn't support Gothic script, which I
know because in the Gothic Wikipedia, I see only rectangles".

Then, as I have been saying, you are using the word "support" in a
_very_ peculiar way.

Doubtless my computer supports all sorts of games. But I don't have
any beyond the few solitaires that came with it.

Or with a narrower sense of "OS": Vista to me is the OS proper plus
its standard fonts.

And Vista's standard fonts happen not to include ones that cover the
Gothic range.

Right. Hence my statement (see above).

Do you not see why it might be more (commercially)
desirable to include Hindi and Thai fonts but not
Gothic or Hanunoo?

Of course I do. And my observation was that Win98 and WinMe didn't
support Hindi (Devanagari), Vista does, but it doesn't support Gothic.

Of course it does. If you had a Gothic-encoded font, you could read
the Gothic wikipedia. But if you had a Phags pa-encoded font, you
couldn't read the Phags pa wikipedia, because Vista does not support
Phags pa.

Windows
Vista comes with several fonts that cover large amounts of Unicode
(such as Tahoma and Arial Unicode), but it doesn't come with fonts
that cover _every_ Unicode range, /

Right. We agree on that. To me, that is identical with saying "Vista
supports large parts of Unicode, but not _every_ range.

You are simply wrong. There are Unicode ranges that Vista _does not_
support, so that if you install a font covering that range, it doesn't
know what to do with it. An example is Phags pa, which is a recent
addition to Unicode.

OK, I believe you when you say so. Only I wonder how that could work
technically. It requires that when a browser program asks the OS to
display certain Unicode scalars it finds in a web page, the OS looks
which range they belongs to, and based on that range decides "what to
do with it". I don't see any technical justification for that. Why not
simply pass on the Unicode scalar, ANY Unicode scalar, to fonts
routines, which then decide if corresponding glyphs are available
given installed and activated fonts?

Now it sounds like you don't understand how Unicode works. The first
500+ pages of the Unicode 5.0 book set forth the details of how _each
individual range_ of characters needs to be implemented in the OS.

In other words, what other support should an OS provide for "Unicode
ranges" (which is not the same as support for "Unicode" proper) than
having pre-installed fonts, and allowing additional fonts to be
post-installed, that cover those ranges?

Once you get beyond the simple alphabets, the handling of scripts
becomes more and more complex. Adjacent characters combine, characters
appear in non-linear orders, forms vary contextually. Every single
feature of every single script has to be encoded in the OS for you to
be able to type in a language without thinking about such things.

rightly recognizing that most users
of personal computers have no use for Gothic (or Hanunoo).

Right. So in my terms, Vista doesn't support Gothic, and cannot
properly display the Gothic Wikipedia.

Your terms are nonsensical.

Why? I still haven't seen any explanation from you yet.
Your Vista is what is installed by the standard installated (or was
pre-installed by the vendor of the computer you bought in a shop),
MINUS any pre-installed fonts? Why?

Now you are making no sense whatsoever.

If the Gothic wikipedia people don't provide a link to a free Gothic
font download right there on every page, they are being very stupid
indeed.

No they are not, because it is up to user, browser, OS-included of
third-party fonts, and OS to support Gothic or not, not up to
Wiki-writers.

If they want their stuff to be read, and they use an arcane script,
they need to provide access to that script.

Virtually every ethnic-solidarity-group's web page offers free font
downloads. That's how I found a nice Pahawh Hmong font, for instance.

(BTW.http://got.wikipedia.org/wiki/????????????????????????does
provides links to Runic script and Latin script versions. The Runic
version also just showed rectangle, the Latin version of the page was
readible, but links were still in Gothic, so contained only
rectangles).

(The very concept of a Gothic wikipedia is very strange. Who is
expected to read it?)

I agree, but that's a different subject.

Perhaps you have better insight in the technical details than I have.

I know no technical details.

You use a different meaning of OS than I do. Yours is more like
"kernel". I sometimes use that meaning too. But not this time. That
causes our misunderstanding each other.

A kernel is something that appears on an ear of corn. A kernel used to
be the simplest syntactic structure generated by the simplest rewrite
rules in pre-Aspects transformational grammar.

This shows that your understanding of OS'es and software in general is
simply insufficient for a meaningful discussion of these matters.

I know how the fonts work. I don't need to know anything else about
OSs, any more than I need to know how the thermostat in my window air
conditioner works..

Right. So in my terms, Vista doesn't support Gothic, and cannot
properly display the Gothic Wikipedia.

Your terms are nonsensical.

And because of you fundamental lack of understanding of software, your
above statement is unjustified.

Again, I don't understand why anything should be changed in the OS
proper (meaning kernel) to support specific definitions of Unicode. So
at least half of the above (anything that's not about fonts) is
meaningless to me.

Nor do I know any reason "why" Microsoft should expend energy on
accommodating users of obscure fonts of interest to a dozen or so
people around the world ...

But they do.

Why does Microsoft incourage people to send e-mails using Office 10,
which in its messages (even by people who only know English, or
perhaps English and Dutch) always includes info about the fonts that
MIGHT be used if the message would ever contain Thai, Tibetan or
Ethopian?

"Office 10"? Is that even supported any more? Office2007 is Office 12.

I'm not joking, they really actually do that.

just because people like Michael Everson
decide they ought to be included, but they do. It's convenient for me,
but we made *The World's Writing Systems* without Unicode.

It would be much easier now, with Unicode.

To an extent. But Unicode is much less flexible than being able to
fire up Fontographer and add to a font some contextual variety of some
character that we happened not to think of the first time around.
.

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