Re: Rendering of ellipsis for different scripts

Jean-Marc Desperrier wrote:
> Axel Hecht wrote:
>> On a regular XP, the ellipsis is rendered similarily to ... (just more 
>> closely spaced). On a Japanese Windows, it's apparently rendered with 
>> MS UI Gothic, which places the dots on the middle of the line 
>> vertically. Now that obviously looks wrong for English text, but I 
>> wonder if it's right in other scripts, in particular, for Japanese. 
>> Independent of other apps using '.''.''.' and thus being on the 
>> baseline, the font might be right for Japanese script. (The bug has a 
>> testcase for the ellipsis in both fonts.)
> 
>> Are there similar problems for other scripts?
>> Could this happen to other glyphs?
> 
> First, I think this is truly a i18n problem, so I'll restrict there.
> 
> Yes, you would have similar problem running a japanese firefox under a 
> chinese OS, all the kanji for menus and button would be rendered using 
> the chinese version that looks ugly.
> 
> That's the real problem I believe. Using the font the OS tells you to 
> use to display your application's menus and buttons means the result 
> will be bad as soon as the localization of the OS and of the application 
> don't match.
> 
> Now this is not as bad as it looks, because doing otherwise means you 
> will loose appearance consistency between applications.

But the _application_ should be able to hint to the OS language it wants 
the OS to pull the glyphs with regard to.  (I would hope) and if a 
correct language isn't present, then the fallback of the current language.

But somehow, I doubt current OS's and font designs allow for this 
distinction. :/