Re: More thoughts

Michael Johnson ([email protected])
Fri, 28 Oct 94 07:42:15 EDT

>%%>I think it's a mistake to try to provide authors with the degree of control
>%%>of the presentation that some of the HTML extensions propose (e.g., fonts).
>%%>
>
>How do you do multilingual stuff, or even mathematics, without changing
>fonts? I guess in an ideal world there would only be one font, with
>all the 300 or so west european letters, perhaps the same number of greek
>and east european letters, then arabic too, maybe 1000 or so maths symbols,
>and then there is chinese...

The HTML+ spec addresses these issues in the "correct" way for a high-level
markup language. It adds the LANG attribute to many tags and adds tags for
math markups. That way the browser implementor can handle these things as
appropriate for the browser platform. This may be as simple as allowing the
end user to specify fonts to use for various languages and for math, and puts
the font control where it belongs, with the end user.

>Anyway, you just use that font and slant it, embolden it, magnify and
>shrink it, and that's all there is to it. Simple eh?

It is if your browser can support these things. Browsers for simple text
terminals (e.g. VT100, 3278) can't.

>I think we do need font control somehow, and that is why TeX is so
>complex. And existing fonts so infuriating!!

I think we should avoid font control at all costs.

Michael Johnson
Relay Technology, Inc.