[jsword-devel] parallel display with WLC

[DM Smith]

On May 2, 2008, at 9:07 AM, Daniel Glassey wrote:

> 2008/5/2 DM Smith <dmsmith555 at yahoo.com>:
>> On Linux, it is especially important to find, install and use a  
>> good default
>> font for English. The one supplied with Java is not all that good.  
>> It is
>> possible to find and install MS fonts. Arial is especially good.
>
> Is there anything wrong with DejaVu that comes as the default with
> most Linux distributions now? (I haven't looked to see what BS does on
> Linux so just curious).

Daniel,
I don't know if there is anything wrong with DejaVu. I am not familiar  
enough with it.

The best font for BibleDesktop has the following characteristics:
TrueType (though OpenType may work for some platforms)

It is a relatively complete Unicode font. This allows parallel display  
of different scripts (e.g. Western European, Simplified Chinese,  
Traditional Chinese, Farsi, Arabic, Hebrew). I find that some fonts  
look good for one kind of script but not others. We have a feature  
request to allow parallel columns to used different fonts.

It supports Farsi, which is like Arabic but has a few extra  
characters. (Java's Unicode font does not have this)

It supports the ligation of adjacent letters.

It supports alternate glyph forms for a single code point, where the  
glyph varies by context. (An example of a character that differs by  
context is the Greek sigma. This is not a particularly good example,  
since the final sigma has it's own code point.)

That it is free of cost.


Because Java uses Arial as it's default on Windows and because it  
satisfies the above, (according to Peter) it is easy to recommend. I  
cannot evaluate whether Farsi looks good or is handled well in a  
particular font.

It might be good to enhance the wiki at http://www.crosswire.org/wiki/index.php/Fonts 
  with the best fonts by language.

DM