PWG> Re: PWG-ANNOUNCE> Character repertoires in printers

PWG> Re: PWG-ANNOUNCE> Character repertoires in printers

ElliottBradshaw at oaktech.com ElliottBradshaw at oaktech.com
Fri Oct 25 10:00:10 EDT 2002


Don,

That's a good question.  I think (hope) the set-of-fonts question is
orthogonal to the set-of-glyphs question.

In XHTML-Print, the set-of-fonts question is handled by the statement in
CSS [see Jim's email] that a user agent should support five generic names
(however, I will buy you a beverage of your choice if you can tell me what
"fantasy" is actually used for).  But, I find nothing in CSS that tells me
which particular Unicode values will be successfully rendered by the user
agent.

If we had a set of Unicode-based repertoires, maybe something like
PWG-Latin-Basic, PWG-Latin-Extended, PWG-Cyrillic, PWG-Japanese,
PWG-Symbols, etc. then XHTML-Print could refer to them and say something
like:

     A complying printer must successfully render each of the codepoints
from the repertoires PWG-Latin-Basic and PWG-Symbols.  For the codepoints
in PWG-Latin-Basic, the rendered glyph should be visibly different in each
of the generic fonts Serif, Sans Serif, Monospace, and Cursive.  For a
Symbol it is acceptable for a complying printer to render it the same way
in all fonts.

But:

1.  This is just one solution;  I don't want to prejudice the discussion.
2.  It would be better to select existing repertoires from somewhere rather
than invent our own.

  -E.

------------------------------------------
Elliott Bradshaw
Director, Software Engineering
Oak Technology Imaging Group
781 638-7534



                                                                                               
                    don at lexmark.co                                                             
                    m                    To:     ElliottBradshaw at oaktech.com                   
                                         cc:     pwg at pwg.org                                   
                    10/25/2002           Subject:     Re: PWG-ANNOUNCE> Character repertoires  
                    09:41 AM              in printers                                          
                                                                                               
                                                                                               





Elliott:

Would you envision this to include a set of mandatory fonts or font
families or just a list of mandatory charactor sets (groups of glyphs)?

**********************************************
 Don Wright                 don at lexmark.com

 Member, IEEE SA Standards Board
         PatCom Chair, SCC Liaison
 Member, IEEE-ISTO Board of Directors
 f.wright at ieee.org / f.wright at computer.org

 Director, Alliances & Standards
 Lexmark International
 740 New Circle Rd
 Lexington, Ky 40550
 859-825-4808 (phone) 603-963-8352 (fax)
**********************************************



ElliottBradshaw at oaktech.com@pwg.org on 10/21/2002 01:00:51 PM

Sent by:    owner-pwg-announce at pwg.org


To:    pwg-announce at pwg.org
cc:
Subject:    PWG-ANNOUNCE> Character repertoires in printers


Folks,

As we discussed in Santa Fe, I am interested in the possibility of defining
standard printer character repertoires for interoperability.

For discussion, a draft charter of a hypothetical working group follows:

<charter>
In traditional printing environments, clients rely on font downloads when
they are not sure a given character is embedded in the printer.  As
printing moves to small clients, downloading may not be an option and
clients have a need to know what characters are available in a given
device.

The purpose of this group is to:
1.  Survey existing methods for indicating available characters, such as
those used in the Bluetooth BPP
2.  Define needs for printing character repertoires, considering such
factors as country locations and wingding-type symbols
3.  Using Unicode, select or define a list of useful repertoires for
printing
4.  Recommend a basic repertoire for inclusion in any printer that supports
embedded Unicode-accessable characters
5.  Propose an extension to the PWG Semantic Model for obtaining the
character repertoires available in a printer
6.  Work with UPnP and other groups to add repertoire support as needed
</charter>

Before proceeding, I would like any and all feedback on these questions:

1.  Is this a problem worth solving?  (vs. vendor-specific solutions)
2.  Should it be treated as part of XHTML-Print, UPnP, or some other group?
(as opposed to a separate working group)
3.  Who is interested in participarting, as author or reviewer?

If there is sufficient interest I will prepare a more complete proposal.

  Thanks,
  Elliott



------------------------------------------
Elliott Bradshaw
Director, Software Engineering
Oak Technology Imaging Group
781 638-7534













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