Private Use areas

[Wordingham Richard via Unicode]

> 
>     On 29 August 2018 at 06:47 "Janusz S. Bień via Unicode" <unicode at unicode.org> wrote:
> 
>         > > 
> >         Storing this information in a font, by hook or crook, would lock users
> >         of those PUA characters into that font. At that rate, you might as well
> >         use ASCII-hacked fonts, as we did 25 years ago.
> > 
> >     > 

I don't see that at all.  The obvious way in the sfnt format, used by OpenType, is as a table consisting entirely of the XML file.  It is quite easy to add a table to an unsigned sfnt font, and even easier to extract a table consisting entirely of UTF-8 text, though ASCII would be even easier, from a font file.

> 
>     Storing the information in a font is inappropriate not only for thetechnical reasons, as I wrote recently (on Thu, Aug 23 2018)
> 
>         > > 
> >         Fonts are for *rendering*, new characters and variants are more and
> >         more often needed for *input* of real life old texts with sufficient
> >         precision.
> > 
> >     > 

1. There are existing methods of associating a font with a text.  Not using a font needs a new scheme for associating a set of PUA properties with a portion of a file.  The font also serves as a code chart.  It can also hold information on how characters combine, which is notoriously beyond the capability of code charts.

2. Registries can vanish.

3. In practice, a file needs to retain an association with a specialist font.  Preserving the font should preserve its content, but there are pruning techniques (e.g. WOFF2) that may remove this content.

Richard.
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