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MARC  December 1997

MARC December 1997

Subject:

Fonts for USMARC diacritics

From:

Randall Barry <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

USMARC <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Wed, 17 Dec 1997 15:01:06 -0500

Content-Type:

text/plain

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text/plain (118 lines)

Wes Brent at RMIT Publishing asked a good question about the
availability of fonts for the extended Latin characters defined
in the USMARC character set.  Before answering his question,
I think it would be worth clarifying a few things he stated
in his email to the USMARC list.

ASCII (the American Standard Code for Information Interchange),
also known as ANSI/NISO Z39.47, is a character set for basic
Latin characters *only*.  It only includes 94 graphic characters
which can be encoded using 7 or 8 bits in the hexadecimal range
21-7E.  The blank or space character (hex 20) is often counted
as a graphic character although is often serves other functions.
The characters identified by hex values 00-1F and 7F are
control characters.  Character with values above 7F are not
part of the ASCII standard at all, which is why the world has
so much trouble with them.

In virtually every country and even within single countries
(like the USA) character codes 80-FF are used for a variety
of graphic and control characters.  Their are so many standards
that defined these characters differently that I won't even
try to list them all.  ISO 8859 Part 1 is the most commonly
seen in the USA as it defines some often needed precomposed
(i.e., letter with diacritic) characters that allow
off-the-shelf software to handle some Western Europena
languages (French, Spanish, but not Portuguese!).  There
are standards that provide needed characters but invariably
they swap some other characters in the hex 80-FF range.
The USMARC character set for Latin script is essentially
just another one of this family of ASCII-based character
sets.  They all include the 94 (or 95 if you include blank)
basic alphabetic characters, but use the remaining available
code positions for a variety of characters.  In USMARC, the
extra characters are nonspacing marks that can be used
with base letters to encode almost all Latin based languages.


Now to the answer to the question about fonts for the USMARC
set.

Most USMARC-based library systems have screen fonts that
support the USMARC latin set in some way.  Many map with
combining (nonspacing) characters the precomposed characters
available in one of the ISO 8859 Part 1 characters, which
are widely implemented in off-the-shelf operating systems.
IBM and Windows have their own Latin sets which more or less
follow one of the ISO 8859 parts.  Versions of DOS and Windows
for different countries usually use different versions of the
Latin set--always with the 95 ASCII Latin characters, but
swap out members of the extended set.  (Notice I did *not*
call these ASCII characters?)  There is almost always
a font to go along with a national version of DOS, Windows,
or a marketed Library system.  If you want a USMARC
extended Latin font, you probably need go no further than
a library system vendor who has a fully MARC-compliant
character set module.

As far as I know, commercial font manufacturers do not
know about the USMARC character sets thus you will not find
an Adobe USMARC font.  There are specialized font manufacturers,
however, who understand MARC and have developed fonts to suit
MARC needs.  Ecological Linguistics (P.O. Box 15156,
Washington, DC 20003) is one that I have seen and that
looks the most "library friendly".  It is a small company
as far as I know, but the president is aware of libraries'
special needs.  Big companies like IBM have their own fonts,
but I don't think they market them widely, if at all.  At
a recent ALA conference I checked with various off-the-shelf
vendors and asked about support for the USMARC extended
characters, and mostly got puzzled looks.  (I don't think
many of the sales people I talked to understood the problem for
us.)  An IBM rep, actually a UK rep who was filling in for
her American counterpart, did know what I was talking about
and had some materials sent to me from their London office.
It seems like European are more familiar with character
sets than Americans.  This sounds like a rash statement,
but when it comes to salesment for American products,
they seem to think "ASCII" is all that matters, and don't
even realize that ASCII is really only 95 graphic characters.

I'm sure there are other font manufacturers that support
USMARC, but Ecological Linguistics is the one that is
most prominent in my mind.  I'd be thrilled if dozens
of font manufacturers in the US respond to this USMARC
list question with news of their USMARC Latin sets,
but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Although the USMARC Latin set is superior by design
in that it allows you to accommodate almost all the
Latin based languages, and transliterations of the others
into Latin with only one 8-bit set, the computer industry
has shunned our sets.  Our hope is that Unicode, which
includes our nonspacing characters, will allow us
to find off-the-shelf products that support our needs.
I would dare say that any product calling itself Unicode
compliant should support the nonspacing marks, but I haven't
seen any yet.  All the demos I've seen thus far for Unicode
based systems have used the precomposed characters in
the ISO 8859 parts.

--Randy Barry

*****************************************************************
* Randall Keigan Barry                          LL              *
* Senior MARC Standards Specialist              LLL             *
* U.S. Library of Congress                      LLL             *
* Network Development and MARC Standards Office LLL     CCCCC   *
* 101 Independence Avenue, S.E.                 LLL   CCC   CCC *
* Washington, DC 20540-4102  U.S.A.             LLL  CCC        *
* TEL: +1-202-707-5118                          LLLLLLLLLL      *
* FAX: +1-202-707-0115                                CCC   CCC *
* NET: [log in to unmask]                                     CCCCC   *
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* NOTE: The ideas and opinions expressed in this communication  *
*  are personal and do not necessarily reflect the position of  *
*  the Library of Congress or any other U.S. government agency. *
*****************************************************************

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