#74 Good/bad font mixing
I'm uploading a screen capture that may be required viewing to make sense of this issue.
In some of my texts I'm using Basic Latin, Khmer and IPA (phonetic) characters.
Right now I have my font set to KhmerOS Freehand, which has all the characters needed for English and Khmer, but is missing several essential IPA glyphs, as well as some accented characters and ligatures.
Previously, when I opened a file that contained characters missing in KhmerOS Freehand, those characters simply didn't display. Nothing at all.
On my old computer, I used DejaVu Sans, which has a really complete set of Western characters and IPA. DejaVu and Arial Unicode MS will display squares when characters not in those fonts are in the text. But on my old computer, somehow characters missing in DejaVu Sans would still display. In my case, the missing characters would be from the Khmer Unicode section and would be displayed in a Khmer font called Daun Penh.
Last week, when I tried DejaVu Sans and Arial on the new computer, I saw those squares for Khmer text. Using KhmerOS Freehand in the same text, it was IPA phonetic symbols that were missing and you wouldn't know from looking at it that there was something missing, because no squares or spaces appeared with the missing characters. (However, selecting, copying and pasting the text into Word showed that the non-displayed characters were still there.)
Obviously, the situation on my old computer was fine -- everything was displayed and I was using my preferred fonts (DejaVu Sans for Western and Daun Penh for Khmer).
Today, I opened a file and instead of missing characters disappearing, they were being displayed, in another font. In the jpeg I'm uploading, you'll see the OE ligature displayed, either in DejaVu Sans or Arial Unicode I believe.
Note that the x-height for KhmerOS Freehand and for those other fonts is very different, so the OE is huge by comparison, because I've greatly increased the font size in XCE in order to be able to read the Khmer.
I want to pass this information on to you. Obviously, I _do_ want to have composite fonts if it's possible, and having a huge OE ligature is better than having no character at all.
I can't think of anything that has occurred that would account for why XCE is displaying something different this week than last week, or why the composite font was on the old computer but not the new one (till now).
I'll try switching to the DejaVu Sans and to Arial Unicode to see if the Khmer displays in some other font or not. I'll let you know.
Roger Sperberg
Inspired by the prospect of a true Khmer XML editor since spring 2007
A "composite" font of KhmerOS and Arial Unicode or DejaVu Sans
Logged In: YES
user_id=611718
Originator: YES
Just wanted to report that this "composite font" creation is only appearing in this context. Selecting a different font in the Options dialog doesn't kick off the same thing I get from the old computer. (I'll try to get a screen capture from it, so things are clear what I mean by "composite font.")
Roger
Composite of two fonts in XCE
Logged In: YES
user_id=611718
Originator: YES
I've uploaded a second image, from my old computer.
The font chosen for XCE is DejaVu Sans, which does not contain any Khmer characters. They are being displayed in the Daun Penh font.
On a different computer, the same setting display squares for the Khmer characters.
File Added: xce-composite-font-DejaVu-Sans-and-DaunPenh.jpg