Re: small phi font problem

Others wrote:

> ... there are two separate font versions of small phi.  
> Probably I did not make myself clear to you: in order to be consistent  
> with mathml rendered by Firefox 2, one have to switch between the the  
> two fonts used within a text and used in a mathml expression. Cheers,  
> ...
>> The Plane-1 Unicode math range provides separate code points for the
>> two different versions of phi.
>>
>> See my test page that displays them side by side:
>> http://www.montefiore.ulg.ac.be/~piater/test/phi.xhtml

I suppose most of us interested in math know the LaTeX names
\phi (straight) and \varphi (curly).

The current (version 2) xhtml+mathml dtd flags U-03C6 as varphi
(a name from LaTeX) and U-03D5 as straightphi.  Those characters
display in my -u8 xterm as the DTD indicates and in a way
that is consistent with the "stixgeneral" beta font.

However, their display in mathml segments by Firefox 2 with pre-
stixbeta Mozilla-recommended fonts, both in linux and windows, has
always been reversed for me.  (One of those old fonts must have it
wrong.)

The page cited by Justus uses plane 1: first U-1D711 (appearing as
varphi in my FF2) and second U-1D719 (appearing as straight phi in my
FF2).

Question 1.  Why use the plane 1 versions rather than U-03C6 and
U-03D5?  Will the version 3 DTD reflect this change?

Question 2.  Is there a reasonable way for a Firefox user to
determine what font provides the glyph under the mouse in
her display?

Thanks.

                                    -- Bill