Re: Level of Unicode support required for various languages

Tim Armes wrote on 10/24/2007 03:07:51 AM:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm looking for accurate answers to the following questions.  I've 

This is almost like asking "how long is a string?" :-) I don't think the 
answers to these questions currently exist. The CLDR is making an attempt 
at documenting characters required for writing a language which might 
answer #1, but it doesn't cover anywhere near all the languages in the 
world.

> 1) How many and which languages absolutely require the use of 
> combinging marks due to the fact there the pre-composed glyphs 
> aren't sufficient?

I just know there are a lot

> 2) How many and which languages absolutely require the use of 
> variant selectors?
> 
> 3) How many and which languages absolutely require the use of variant 
glyphs?

A variant by whose standard? The glyph TUS displays may not actually be 
the first choice for a lot of languages. For example, because we (SIL) 
believe more languages use a capital ENG (U+014A) that looks like an 
enlarged small eng, rather than an "N" shaped capital ENG, we have chosen 
to make a "variant" of the capital ENG (U+014A) be the default glyph in 
our fonts with the glyph as shown in TUS as a "variant" in our fonts. 

If you are interested, you can see a list of all the variants we've added 
to our Latin/Cyrillic fonts here: 
http://scripts.sil.org/SILUnicodeRF_Features We have not documented which 
languages use these variants, and it doesn't help you with other scripts.

Lorna Priest
SIL International