Re: Recommended typefaces

On 2006-05-25, Mike Barnes <may2006@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In alt.usage.english, Peter Moylan wrote:
*** Chambers wrote:

What I would like to know is why all the variable-pitch fonts have
such poor, indistinct, almost invisible, decimal points?

There are no decimal points on the typical computer keyboard. Logically
there should be one on the numeric keypad, but in most operating systems
the keyboard driver converts it to a period. (After which programs such
as spreadsheets have to decide to treat a period as a decimal point.)

A lot of what you say simply isn't true.

"Most operating systems" surely includes Microsoft Windows. Microsoft
Windows' keyboard driver distinguishes quite clearly between the decimal
and period keys, and it is *applications* (not Windows' keyboard driver;
not just Microsoft applications) that decide to treat the decimal key as
a period.

It is true that the Windows keyboard driver makes it easy to treat the
decimal key as a period, as a convenience for writers of applications
and operating system components that work in ASCII, which has no decimal
point symbol. But programs such as spreadsheets most certainly do not
"have to treat the period as a decimal point". My text editor is an
example of an application that easily distinguishes between the numeric
keypad keys and their equivalents on the typewriter section (the plus
and hyphen keys do plus and hyphen; the add and subtract keys do search
next and previous).

The font probably does have a decimal point,

Actually the font probably doesn't have a decimal point, because there
is no such character in Unicode, which is the industry standard for
representation and manipulation of characters.

They're called presentation forms, and they don't need their own code
points, the few that do are there for compatibility reasons. Some fonts
have lining and text figures, too.
.