Question for Malay Jawi letter in Unicode - three quarter hamza

[Doug Ewell]

Julian Bradfield wrote:

>>> but
>>> font makers should make their font display the correct position and 
>>> sizing when the correct language is chosen in the software people are 
>>> using.
>>
>> I'm pretty sure that's not how fonts work.
>
> Isn't that what language system tags and the locl feature in OpenType
> are for?
>
> Indeed, a moment's googling shows people making fonts with language-
> dependent acutes.

Sorry, that was hasty; I put the burden on the font instead of the software.

I meant to suggest that much of the time, software is not configured to allow a choice of language, or it does not communicate that choice to the rendering engine so the font can do the right thing. For example, when typing this email in Microsoft Outlook, I have no idea whether it is configured to know that I am writing in English (or French or Polish, where language-dependent acutes would matter) or whether it would tell Windows about that if it knew.

Since language tagging is considered to belong to the domain of fancy text, I should try experimenting with French-tagged and Polish-tagged HTML, with a variety of fonts and browsers. The plainer the text, the less likely I suspect any of this process is to exist. I certainly can't tell Notepad++ or even BabelPad what language my text is in.

--
Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org