Re: Character to Glyph and Software Gimicks

["Dr.K. Kalyanasundaram" <kalyan@igcsun3.epfl.ch>]

Dear Muthu:
>  My understanding is that MacOS supports glyph-substitution *today*.
> I do not know which version of the OS but I'm pretty sure it does,
> even before we talk about OpenType.

There appears to be some confusion on what I was trying to say.
I am NOT saying that "glyph substitution" is not possible on Mac
fonts today. But it is only possible on recent line of Macs that are
beefed up in memory and not on old Macs.
Yes, glyph substition is possible with the Apple's
new font technology called QuickDraw GX. 
I have read a lot about it, even though I have not started using them.
But, these new fonts require system 7.X. 
The directives to font developers stated that "QuickDraw"
is operational even in 68K series Macs but require System 7.X".
Even two days ago I checked out this point specifically
in the Apple website. Unfortunately I forgot to put a bookmark. I will
locate the Apple webpage where this is stated explicitly during the
weekend and will let you know.

There will be no problems in installing Quickdraw GX fonts in my 
PowerMac 4400 (I have not tried them out yet! ). 
These days on Macintoshes you cannot do much unless you
have a RAM of atleast 24 Mb (before using Ram doubler )
and in the old machines there are no slots to beef up the memory.
SO, given the memory requirements for System 7.X and the
 QuickDraw package to work properly, these new fonts are 
usable only on recent machines (I mean those that were released
in the last five years at most - at Quadra level but not even old
MacIIs.)

Regarding Apple's recent Indian Multi-language Kit, the story is the
same. You need System 7.5 or later. 
You can see it mentioned explicitly in the main webpage
http://www.macos.apple.com/multilingual/indian.html

 I already have stated that I do not want to prolong debates on
this topic. Only a few days back you said that, we should not rush
things and try to go the root of all key issues.
I just wanted you to be very clear that the concept of glyph
substitution is possible  but only with the recent generation of
computers
and not with the old ones. The case with Mac illustrates my point.

If you still insist on having "glyph substitution" as the way we should
have old-style characters, it is fine with me. 
We will then be talking about fonts usable on recent machines only.
We should not have illusions on what is possible and 
what is not as of date.

Kalyan