About Unicode and other font mysteries (for Mac)

[Despot <despot@xxxxxxxxxx>]

The last days' crossfire on the list convinced me that we have here the real
gurus for all Unicode issues. My questions are so basic that I hardly dare
post them.

We are working with FM6/MacOS 9, 9.1 (Fv)

I often get Word 8 files with Cyrillic or Central European text, which I
could not read until I installed MacOS 9.1 with specific CY and CE fonts.

I noticed, though, that the same files were readable on any recent Windows
OS, and without having to change the font (for ex., Times NewRoman appeared
also in Cyrillic if needed). The same font (Times NewRoman) on MacOS 9 shows
blank spaces, underlines, and so on. On MacOS 9.1, you need to apply a
cyrillic font to see characters correctly.

Question Nr. 1
==============
Are the Windows standard fonts Unicode-encoded? Are  special keyboard
layouts required to use them on a PC?

Question Nr. 2
==============
On MacOS 9.1, the keyboard layouts used for CE and Cyrillic have nothing to
do with a QWERTY keyboard (ex. Ukrainian, Russian, Czech...). Is there a way
to customise them?

Question Nr. 3
==============
When importing such a file (which contains Cyrillic and Latin characters
along, for ex.) into FrameMaker, you get a sort of an encrypted text. Is
there a filter, or converting tip, to reset characters as they appear in a
standard ASCII font?

Question Nr. 4
==============
Now I just got a book written in French (Word 01/MacOS9) which also appears
"encrypted" as soon as it is exported from MSWord (into FM or XPress). This
is quite amazing! We are working on the same system, with same fonts,
settings, and the author swears he used a standard Latin kbd layout). The
only turnaround I found was to let him send the chapters in html e-mail
messages, and then to copy/paste them into Word files on my own computer! -
RTF export  did not work, saving in previous MSWord versions neither.
Can anyone explain this?

Thanks to all those who answer.

Slobodan Despot
-- 

E D I T I O N S  L'A G E  D'H O M M E
Rue de Geneve 10   CH-1000 Lausanne 9














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