Re: [libreoffice-users] insert unicode char in writer

At 09:59 03/10/2018 +0000, Gary Collins wrote:
> I don't *think* a replacement font is happening - though i'm no 
> expert. I can start a new text document which starts with liberation 
> serif and enter u+a723 followed by alt+x and get the character ok. 
> So unless font substitution occurs automatically, transparently and 
> with absolutely no indication, with LO searching all loaded fonts 
> until it finds one with the character...... maybe it does that, but 
> it would seem to me to be undesirable because what if more than one 
> loaded font had the character, on what basis would the choice be 
> made? Surely, that's something the document author ought to decide. 
> But how would the author know that a replacement was necessary at 
> all? Or maybe it's different in windows and ubuntu?

This is fairly easy to understand if you remember that word processor 
document files (and similar) generally do not contain fonts at all. 
Yes: really! Instead, they just contain the *names* (and perhaps more 
details) of required fonts. The required glyphs from any fonts for 
*all* characters in your document are provided at the viewing or 
printing end, either from the same font, another font with the same 
name, another font with a similar name, or perhaps a suitably similar 
font - serif for serif, sans for sans, and so on. This is one reason 
why such documents often do not appear identical when displayed or 
printed on any other computer.

(As I explained to you privately) if you look for a character in 
Special Character..., you will see a glyph only if it exists in that 
font. But if you paste material in, surely you will see font 
substitution in action? Just try changing the font of any unusual 
characters you have as well as more common characters; you may see a 
visible difference in what happens as a result of any necessary substitution.

It seems to me that this substitution needs to happen for all word 
processor and similar documents, so must happen also in all operating 
systems. I think you can see this if you unpack an Open Document 
Format document file and observe the font indications.

Remember also that if you send word processor documents to others, 
you are relying on font availability and substitution at the far end 
to display what you require. If your characters are sufficiently 
unusual, it is just possible that any receiving system may not have a 
font that includes them. This is where PDFs come in, since they are 
different, incorporating subsets of required fonts. That's one of the 
facets that makes them "P" (for "Portable").

I trust this helps.

Brian Barker


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