Talk:Arial Unicode MS

Bugs

I'm not sure that the examples given in the "Bugs" section have been typed in correctly. I was under the impression that the double-character diacritics are supposed to appear after both characters, rather than between them. For example:

"Latin Small Letter K" + "Latin Small Letter P" + "Combining Double Inverted Breve" = kp͡

The above works fine for me on WinXP SP1, in Firefox 1.0.6, with Arial Unicode MS 1.00 (according to Windows Font Viewer).

The examples under "Bugs" are all of the form letter, mark, letter. If my understanding is correct, the font engine is doing exactly what it's supposed to -- render the diacritic over the preceding letter, and the space before that letter.

Signed,
R. M. Harman
Linguist and Software Engineer
iTAP Product Team, Motorola
(apologies for being a newbie at using discussion pages; I probably am not formatting things all that well)

hmm this needs to be checked with the unicode standard. Plugwash 22:02, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

I just sent the following message to unicode.org through thier contact form:

whilst http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode4.0.0/ch02.pdf#G1708 doesn't mention double diacritics (e.g. U+035C) specificially it seems to imply that they should go after both characters.

however http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0300.pdf seems to imply that they should be placed between the two characters they combine with.

which is correct?

-- Plugwash 23:23, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

and the reply i have just received was

Peter,

The information you are looking for is in Section 7.7 of the Unicode Standard version 4.0. You should also look at Section 3.11.

Regards,

---------------------------

Magda Danish

Sr. Administrative Director

The Unicode Consortium

650-693-3921

magda@unicode.org

ok having just read section 7.7 (http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode4.0.0/ch07.pdf and use the toc) it is made totally unambiguous that combining double diacritics should be placed between the two characters they go over. I am therefore removing the comment from the article.

RM Harman here again. I actually apparently got here at the same time as you, and was going to edit in that I agree with your position on this. I guess I had just been misled by years of doing things the way MS has been doing it. How would you feel about adding in a remark explaining that there's a way to achieve the desired effect -- it's just not standard-compliant? (MS, break standards? Never!)

Done, btw do consider getting an account. its pretty hard to build up a reputation as a good editor if the only way people have to identify you is an ip (which may even change all the time).Plugwash 23:07, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Why rounder glyphs than the original font?

Does anyone know why the glyphs that are in both Arial and Arial Unicode MS are different? Offhand I'd say the Arial Unicode MS glyphs look more Helvetica-like, which makes me wonder if Arial at one time looked much the same, but was made more distinct later. Any info appreciated.—mjb 00:32, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I decided to study the fonts more closely, and I determined that the "rounder glyphs" are actually the same; they're just stretched a bit, mainly horizontally, due to the different font metrics. Arial Unicode MS has different-sized bounding boxes, which the renderer in Windows apparently does not take into account (not that it should be expected to). I added this info to the article.—mjb 10:16, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Just FYI, Arial was originally derived from Helvetica, and was built into MS products presumably because it cost less to license. Auros 21:06, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Availability

The font doesn't appear to be available on the Wayback Machine any longer [1].

• http://vietunicode.sourceforge.net/
• (link removed)

I was able to download it at the link provided by the Gentoo wiki, which alludes to the fact that the executable moves around a lot, presumably due to cease and desist letters. John Vandenberg 00:38, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

This article states several times that Arial Unicode is licensed by Microsoft exclusively to Ascender. I do not believe this is the case now, though it may have been previously. On October 16, 2007, Apple announced on their website that the next version of their flagship operating system, Mac OS X v10.5 ("Leopard"), would be bundled with Arial Unicode. Interestingly, Leopard is also slated to ship with several other previously Microsoft-only fonts, including Microsoft Sans Serif, Tahoma, and Wingdings. Norville 20:15, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Support for Indian languages

Does Arial Unicode support Indian Languages? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mangalkumar (talk • contribs) 05:47, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Certainly Devanagari and Bengali.. AnonMoos (talk) 02:49, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Modified ∂ ∆ ∏ ∑ √ ∞ ∫ ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥

The original font has primary symbols in the Macintosh Roman block: ∂ ∆ ∏ ∑ √ ∞ ∫ ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥ and other symbols which are in the Windows Glyph List, but sorted to Macintosh such as ≡ ⌂ ⌐ ⌠ ⌡

Compare this font:

∂ ∆ ∏ ∑ √ ∞ ∫ ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥

Your font which was default into the font in Win XP:

∂ ∆ ∏ ∑ √ ∞ ∫ ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥

222.233.99.69 (talk) 14:49, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand. What do you mean by "original" font? Are you saying there are differences in how older and newer versions of Arial Unicode MS behave on Mac OS? Are you referring to regular Arial?

Also, Mac OS Roman is a character encoding, not a Unicode block. Are you trying to say you get mis-mapped characters when you use Arial Unicode MS in a Mac OS Roman-encoded document? Provide a more specific example that we can reproduce. What software are you using, what OS, what versions of what fonts?

Except for the size & weight of "∫ ≈ ≠", your two examples are identical on my Windows XP system, as viewed in Firefox. Nothing seems amiss. —mjb (talk) 23:32, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Italics, bold and bold italics

There are no italics, bold and bold italics variants of this font, in contrast to Arial. Why? 85.3.12.222 (talk) 18:20, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

• Because this font is ginormous so its not worth the maintenance that would be required. Any serious font should work fine with synthetic bold/italics... internet-wise it's probably a bad idea to have variants of fonts being exchanged in general. Even for corporate sites that would like to look like print mags. -- 11:45, 27 January 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.54.192.53 (talk)

Umh, I just checked on my Windows 8.1 machine, and Arial Unicode MS has plain, bold, italic, and bold italic. Only up to 24pt though. James Galloway (talk) 18:24, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

• Those are synthetically generated from the base font. — Edokter (talk) — 19:14, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Reliable webfont?

For the last half decade at least I've been using this as a webfont, since it seems to be on every Windows based machine I've ever setup that I can remember and is the only decent huge Unicode fontset on Windows. Is this a bad assumption? I noticed it was not on the "XP Mode" Virtual PC you can download for Windows Vista/7 today when I upgraded to IE9 but still needed to be able to test sites under IE8. I assumed it came installed with IE or something. I assumed modern browsers need to be able to support Unicode out of the box.

EDITED: It seems like possibly it's just part of the MS Office sampler that comes pre-installed with Windows. But on all platforms? --67.54.192.53 (talk) 13:35, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

It is only installed with MS Office. So it is not a sure bet to rely on it. The de facto unicode font for Windows is 'Lucida Sans Unicode', so it is best to have both in your fontstack. BTW, I asume by 'using as a webfont' you mean just specifying the font in your CSS fontstack? I can't image serving it as a downloadable font. That would be a bad idea; first because Microsoft has not licenced it for use as a webfont, second because the font is a humongous 22 megabytes! — Edokter (talk) — 12:06, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

It's less than 15MB compressed. Although it would be nice if there was a communal link, and if browsers would highlight the large font download. I am the same person above BTW, ~3yrs later. I had to replace a HDD on my workstation, and cloning wasn't in the cards, so after reinstalling Windows from scratch there was no Arial Unicode MS, so I was reminded of this problem again. I tried to set it up with @font-face back in 2011, but Firefox did not handle bold/italics correctly for local fonts on Windows then, so I filed a bug and put it off. But it's working now, either thanks to my effort, or maybe because I remember FF changing to Cairo or something like that a while back. Regardless, I don't think Microsoft needs to license it as a webfont, since browsers have always used the fonts on hand. Like if your publishing software comes with fonts, then they work if webpages use those fonts. Lucida Sans is unfit for websites (and supports half as many glyphs.) Without a Unicode font Windows really isn't a Unicode OS. So using font-face is a good way to bridge the gap. I don't think it is that expensive to license for a website, but I may be wrong. I don't think MS or the foundry would make a fuss of it. Not for a small fry anyway. You'd know the site has made it big time if someone cared enough to make a stink about a website using it. Plus p.r. wise it would be MS advertising that Windows is not able to deliver Unicode to its consumer install base--172.243.161.115 (talk) 06:17, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Using it in a font stack does not require a licence (we actually do that here, see {{Unicode}}), but if you intend to make it available as a download, then you will definitely need a licence, and Microsoft will send you a letter. Its size is still a problem for downloading anyway, even if compressed. You are correct that XP lacks extensive Unicode support out of the box. — Edokter (talk) — 10:57, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

As does Windows Vista and 7. And probably 8 too. It's not a Unicode OS if it doesn't sport at least one Unicode font fit for published text. Realistically it should have at least one serif and one sans printable font. I don't think the license for MS belongs to Microsoft even though its called MS. If it did it would probably be part of the Windows package. The article says Apple has licensed the same font. In this case of this font, I'd be surprised if anyone batted an eyelash. As for the size of the font, you can't even get online without being forced to download hundreds of MBs anymore. 15MB is really not a problem. That's smaller than a lossless image can be.--172.243.161.115 (talk) 08:23, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Incorrect diacritics

What is the form for Ľľ, Şş and Ţţ? 121.164.146.86 (talk) 15:37, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Diacritic marks

The letters Ľ and ľ displays as an letter L with caron, the letters Ş and ş displays as Ș and ș (s with comma) and the letters Ţ and ţ displays as Ț and ț (T with comma). In your Ubuntu virtual machine, all characters will display correctly using the Windows Vista versions of all of the MS Core Fonts. 121.164.146.236 (talk) 05:59, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Extended glyph spacing in Word 2000

You are showing extended glyph spacing in Word 2000 under Windows 2000 Professional virtual machine. 121.164.146.236 (talk) 09:09, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

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Italics

What does this mean: "there is no oblique (italic) version"? As a layperson, I understand this to mean that I can't write in italics with Arial Unicode (unless I do some sort of weird trick maybe). But this is not the case. I just typed a word in a new MSW document with Arial Unicode. I then marked the word and hit Ctrl i. Wolia, the word went cursive. 211.225.33.104 (talk) 02:10, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Most fonts come with separate italic (as wel as bold and bold/italic) versions. If these are missing, Windows will emulate bold or italics, which does not always look as good. Especially serif font have very distinct italic fonts: normal vs. italics. Note the different 'a's. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 13:32, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Bugs #2

I am not sure why nobody reports the other bugs with this font:

• Design: It should be a consistent typeface regarding the design. Being a sans-serif typeface, all the glyphs should be sans-serif (or at least monotone (same stroke width) in the scripts that don't have serifs). These scripts have contrast (variable stroke width): Armenian (this one with serifs), Devanagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, Oriya, Tamil (this one is even in italic!!!), Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Tibetan.
  Ironically, this font has a better design for Arabic script than its predecessor, Arial. The Arabic glyphs in the Arial font are not monotone, they have contrast and they are not correctly aligned with the remainder scripts, if you put together Latin text with Arabic text in Arial, the Arabic characters will look shifted up. Arial Unicode MS doesn'have this problem.
• Open Type Tables: Some Open Type Tables are incomplete. Arial Unicode MS doesn't handle all the conjuncts for Indian scripts and for Tibetan. It has no OTT for Lao script, the combining characters appear as spacing characters. The contextual forms for some Arabic characters don't work.
• Up to date: Arial Unicode MS hasn't been updated since version 1.01. Therefore, several recent Unicode blocks are missing. I find particularly critical the missing of Thaana, Sinhala, Myanmar, Ethiopic and Khmer since these scripts are used in national/official languages of some countries.

Code Page Guy (talk) 14:28, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

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