Template talk:Unicode fonts

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This controls the fonts listing for Template:Unicode. Discussion at Template_talk:Unicode.

[edit] Order of Unicode Fonts

This template lists the available Unicode fonts, for purposes like the Unicode template, and so on.

The order of this list has been debated and I propose that the fonts be sorted according to the completeness in relation to the Unicode character set. For example, if I have Bitstream Cyberbit and Arial Unicode MS. Look at what would be shown here if Bitstream Cyberbit had precedence over Arial Unicode MS (on Internet Explorer, it being the most widely used browser around):

(empty set) ∅ denoting the set ∅ (from Regular expression)

It is known that Arial Unicode MS has probably the most complete Unicode character set around. I suggest that a scan on the completeness of the Unicode fonts be done, and the fonts be sorted in descending order. -- AstroNox 09:30, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

I reverted the last change because unfortunately it broke Unicode support for Vietnamese characters in Latin Extended Additional and Yiddish characters in Alphabetic Presentation Forms, under a Windows XP box. The default font supports these, so we'd be in the odd position of having the "Unicode" font support fewer alphabetical characters than the default font. -- Curps 18:39, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
Alphabetic Presentation Forms? Sorry, you lost me here; a little explanation on this issue? Is there a need to support Yiddish characters on the standard Unicode font set (considering that this is the English version of Wikipedia)? We can have another template that displays Yiddish text, if that is necessary, just like how the {{polytonic}} template is used for Greek. -- AstroNox 03:26, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
Unicode.org defines various code ranges, "Alphabetic Presentation Forms" is one of them (that's their official name). I created a bunch of templates that show Unicode charts for these, see the list below and the discussion at Village pump (technical)#Unicode chart templates.
It may be that there are tradeoffs and we need something more than a one-size-fits-all {{unicode}} template. I have the same general idea as you: systematically check the coverage of each major font, with a view to possibly editing {{unicode fonts}} accordingly.
I'm going to create some pages that allow for easier side-by-side comparison of the various Unicode fonts, using the Unicode chart templates. Give me a couple of days. -- Curps 14:44, 14 September 2005 (UTC)



Good work Curps. What I've done is to put them all together in {{Unicode chart All}}, which takes in a parameter representing the font name(s). What I feel can be improved on the code charts is to allow a parameter input to set the font on the chart. Another would be to analyse and remove the non-existant characters on the charts (I believe your charts were generated via scripts), and also to indicate which Unicode version do these charts belong to (I believe it is v4.1).
Perhaps after all this is done, templates per language/code range can be created and used instead of one single monolithic {{Unicode}} and {{Unicode fonts}} template. I highly doubt there are fonts (or very few) that will ever fully encompass the entire Unicode standard. -- AstroNox 11:39, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
I thought about having a parameter for the font, but the problem is, "{{unicode fonts}}" isn't a font name, it's a template, and you can't pass a template as a parameter to another template. So it was easier to just let the font be specified outside the template itself.
The templates aren't really Unicode version dependent. When 4.2 or 5.0 comes out, the only difference is that a few new code ranges will be defined, so a few new templates can be created. -- Curps 11:51, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
Your parameter does not need to be a template :) -- AstroNox 15:17, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
How do you mean? You could spell out the contents of {{unicode fonts}} and use that as a parameter, but that's a bad idea since they might change over time. Or am I missing something obvious? -- Curps 15:36, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
Well, I believe you are using these templates to test individual fonts right? Thus there is no need to link to a template, if that's possible. But I guess doing a div should be fine nonetheless.
We'd use them to test individual fonts, but we'd also use them to test "unicode fonts" (or "IPA" or "Polytonic"), to see at a glance the result of any change to the font ordering.
So, how do you intend to go about with this "systematically check the coverage of each major font"? I feel that the {{Unicode}} template should focus more on the Latin, Greek, Mathematical Operators, Currency Symbols, Arrows, Dingbats, Letterlike Symbols, Number Forms, just to name a few. These are the more commonly used glyphs in most articles, in this English version of Wikipedia. As for different languages, I'd suggest personalized templates, just like the {{Polytonic}} template. However, even with a polytonic Greek template, I feel that incoporating Greek into this {{Unicode}} template is good because the Grecian glyphs are commonly used in Physics and Mathematics. -- AstroNox 18:07, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
Well, so far one annoying thing is that there doesn't seem to be any way in HTML or CSS to specify "display only this one font, and if it's not on the system then display nothing". The way it seems to work is, it always falls back to the default font, whether you want it to or not. That makes it hard to do the comparison, since you never know if you're looking at the actual font you think you're looking at. I've been trying to find a way around that, no luck so far. Any ideas?
Another issue is that Wikipedia has been awful slow lately. Perhaps we can give it try in a few days. -- Curps 18:34, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
Hey Curps. Sorry I've been rather busy lately. I have some projects to attend to at the moment but I'll help out whenever I can—just drop me a message. -- AstroNox 18:12, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Use of this template

I'm not loving the use of this template. What exactly is the purpose of it? Should the processing of proper Unicode display not be the job of the browser? The reason I'm asking is because, on pages like Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Unicode) (draft), the text using this template look completely different from text not using this template in my browser. On the particular page, I see the text in charts on the left in Verdana and the text in the charts on the right in one of: TITUS Cyberbit Basic, Code2000, Doulos SIL, Chrysanthi Unicode, Bitstream Cyberbit, Bitstream CyberBase, Thryomanes, Gentium, GentiumAlt, Visual Geez Unicode, Lucida Grande, Arial Unicode MS, Microsoft Sans Serif, Lucida Sans Unicode. Often times, the size and shape of the text characters, as well as the table, change. What in one font is perfectly readable is not in another. Font mismatch is bad enough when the browser decides it needs to use a special character from a font different from what the rest of the text is written in. Don't make it worse by making that decision for it. —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 09:50, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Its purpose is to enable some characters that otherwise would not show on MSIE to show. It only makes a difference on MSIE, due to a CSS hack. It's also only needed on MSIE, which has poorer font selection mechanisms. The original discussion is on Template talk:IPA. --cesarb 14:16, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Well, the claim that it only changes things in IE isn't true for me: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.11) Gecko/20050728. Like I said, the two charts that are identical in content (apart from the fonts) look different for me.... —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 17:19, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Oh, wait a second.... The charts on that page don't use the inherit part. Seems like I may have my foot in my mouth here.... As you were.—Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 17:21, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Due to Mediawiki changes, the technique used to fool MSIE6 no longer works, and may screw things up, to boot. Template:IPA, Template:Unicode, and Template:Polytonic have been updated, but any places where this has been used for a table or div on a page will have to be changed manually. Short explanation: put in class="Unicode". For details, see Template talk:IPA#Font declaration has been moved to monobook.css. —Michael Z. 2005-10-4 15:58 Z

[edit] JUnicode?

Is there any need/point in adding JUnicode to the list? Urhixidur 21:08, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

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