PWG Mail Archive: PWG> Re: Character repertoires in printers

PWG> Re: Character repertoires in printers

From: don@lexmark.com
Date: Fri Oct 25 2002 - 10:16:03 EDT

  • Next message: ElliottBradshaw@oaktech.com: "PWG> Character Repertoires"

    Elliott, et al:

    I too think that the set-of-fonts questions is orthogonal to the
    set-of-glyphs question so let's set aside the set-of-fonts question and
    called it solved (at least temporarily by the five generic font families.)

    I would hope (and beleive) that some set of character set experts have
    already done a yeoman's job of grouping the glyphs together into some
    reason number of sets that hold all the necessary glyphs to represent some
    number of languages. In the Bluetooth printing model, we use the set of
    glyphs (not the encodings) from the ever popular:

    - ISO 8859.xx
    - GB2312-80 (Chinese - PRC)
    - Shift JIS (Japanese)
    - KS C 5601-1987 (Korean)
    - Big5 (Chinese - Taiwan)
    - TIS-620 (Thai)

    All the encodings were UniCode.

    (I guess I just prejudiced the discussion.)

    **********************************************
     Don Wright don@lexmark.com

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

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

    ElliottBradshaw@oaktech.com on 10/25/2002 10:00:10 AM

    To: don@lexmark.com
    cc: pwg@pwg.org
    Subject: Re: PWG-ANNOUNCE> Character repertoires in printers

    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@lexmark.co
                        m To:
                        ElliottBradshaw@oaktech.com
                                             cc: pwg@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@lexmark.com

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

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

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

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

    To: pwg-announce@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



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Oct 25 2002 - 10:33:48 EDT