RE: Frame 7 & Unicode

[Dmitri Yunov <yudmi@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

More interestingly, we've been using an automatical mapping the SGML ISO
entities of Greek, Cyrillic, typographical symbols and so on to/from a lot
of custom F+SGML char tags based on right Cyr, Greek, CE etc. fonts with the
help of RW rules and F+SGML main template.

This gives to us a good solution managing the platform-independent SGML/FM
mixed-languages documents (Win-Mac-UNIX) even if Frame does not support
these languages.

Like this:
isocyr1.rw
<...>
entity "Acy" is fm char 0xcb in "FmCyrillic";
entity "acy" is fm char 0x88 in "FmCyrillic";
entity "Bcy" is fm char 0xe7 in "FmCyrillic";
<...>

isopub.rw
/* This file contains read/write rules for the ISOpub entity set*/
<...>
entity "mdash" is fm char 0xd0 in "FmCyrillic";
entity "ndash" is fm char 0xd0 in "FmCyrillic";
entity "hellip" is fm char 0xc9 in "FmCyrillic";
<...>

It looks like a some pseudo-Unicode equivalent  based on ISO 8879-1986 and
good abilities of F+SGML (RW rules and entities automatical style mapping).

The question is what will happen with this in FM7.
Would it work, and how, touching the truncated XML support that new FM7 has
? Again, I'm not sure yet.

Dm.


-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Emory
To: Free Framers
Sent: 9/04/02 14:32
Subject: Frame 7 & Unicode

The following statement was found on page 4 of the 38-page Reviewer's
Guide 
to FM7. It is the only statement found in that document which is
relevant 
to the basic question about the degree of support for Unicode:

"UTF-8/UTF-16) characters in XML
files can be automatically mapped to the
appropriate fonts for printing."

I parse this statement to mean that, if you export an FM7 document to
XML, 
the XML file can be sent to a printer which presumably utilizes Unicode
fonts.

It is quite clear, therefore, that FM7 does not support Unicode fonts.

This conclusion is confirmed, as Dmitri Yunov pointed out, by the Q and
A 
on page 5 of the FM7 FAQ, which states that FM7 supports Unicode
encoding 
for reading and writing XML in Western European and Asian languages.... 
Unicode characters that do not map to FrameMaker software's internal 
character set are imported as FrameMaker markers and exported intact
when 
you save your XML files."

Thus, it is clear that FM7's "internal character set" is the same as it
was 
in FM6, probably including the 6 locked code points that make it 
impossible, with ordinary fonts, to use FM7 for Eastern and Central 
European languages, as well as for Cyrillic languages. The only
workaround 
is to use country-specific fonts which, according to Dmitri and others,
get 
around the locked code point impasse.

So Dmitrii's conclusion about Unicode support is correct. The only added

feature is the ability to properly import Unicode from XML document 
instances. But  (and this is a big but):

1. If you import an XML document instance containing Unicode characters 
that do not represent characters in FM7's internal character set, they
will 
be imported as markers, and the characters themselves will not be 
displayable or printable.

2. if you are originating documents in FM7 for export to XML, any 
characters that cannot be represented in FM7's internal character set
will 
have to be represented by markers in some prescribed syntax. These
markers 
will than be converted to the corresponding Unicode characters on export
to 
XML.

3. To properly print FM7 documents which contain Unicode characters 
represented by markers, you must export them to XML, and print from the 
XML, which is ridiculous.

4. Resorting to the use of country-specific fonts in FrameMaker so as to

produce FM7 documents in unsupported languages would, on export to XML, 
produce a mis-mapping of some or all of the characters in the
unsupported 
language.





====================
| Nullius in Verba |
====================
Dan Emory, Dan Emory & Associates
FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design & Database Publishing
Voice/Fax: 949-722-8971 E-Mail: danemory@primenet.com
177 Riverside Ave., STE F, #1151, Newport Beach, CA 92663
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