Version of Unicode?

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ClintGoss
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Version of Unicode?

Post by ClintGoss »

Is there a straightforward way to figure out which Version of Unicode FC is currently using? I'm thinking specifically about the code point allocations ...

It would be *very* nice to be able to see whether a particular font fills out a block for a given version of Unicode ... i.e. being to switch FC between different versions of Unicode ... but that would be a substantial addition, I guess.

It would also be helpful to be able to view the code point space organized/grouped by script rather than by code blocks, but that's also a significant change to the GUI ...

-Clint
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Re: Version of Unicode?

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

ClintGoss wrote: Wed May 01, 2019 9:45 pm Is there a straightforward way to figure out which Version of Unicode FC is currently using?
Open Blocks.txt in the Unicode folder.

# Blocks-10.0.0.txt
# Date: 2017-04-12, 17:30:00 GMT [KW]
# © 2017 Unicode®, Inc.

You could copy different versions of Blocks.txt and UnicodeData.txt to your User Data Folder for earlier Unicode versions.

Right-click on a character set in the Glyph Overview panel to complete a character set.
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ClintGoss
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Re: Version of Unicode?

Post by ClintGoss »

Excellent! I'm sure I'd need to restart FC on such as config-file swap ...

Wondering if that's all it would take to get FC working on Unicode 12.0 ... is there really nothing else that is needed? Well, I can just try it and see ...
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Re: Version of Unicode?

Post by Erwin Denissen »

Or use Unicode 12.1.0 if you are in need of Reiwa ($32FF).
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Re: Version of Unicode?

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

The problem seems to be solved, so I moved the thread to the Support forum.
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Re: Version of Unicode?

Post by ClintGoss »

Could you please confirm that it is only UnicodeData.txt and Blocks.txt that I need to substitute to change the Unicode version number?

... or do ArabicShaping.txt and Scripts.txt also need to be swapped??

I've run initial tests with great success ... but need to know if these file are read by FC. I can't tell, since FC plows ahead even if UnicodeData.txt and Blocks.txt are missing, so I have no idea if ArabicShaping.txt and Scripts.txt are being read.
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Re: Version of Unicode?

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

The data files are stored in the C:\Program Files\ folders when you install FontCreator.

If you don't copy them to %AppData% these versions will be used. If you copy the newer (or older) versions to %AppData% then those will be used.

The same reasoning will apply to the other text files in the Unicode folder. FontCreator will use what it find in %AppData% and fall back to the installed files in C:\Program Files\ if it does not find them there.
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ClintGoss
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Re: Version of Unicode?

Post by ClintGoss »

My main concern is that there are 4 files in FC's /Unicode subdirectory: ArabicShaping.txt, Blocks.txt, Scripts.txt, UnicodeData.txt (there is also ReadMe.txt, but let's leave that aside).

You mentioned replacing Blocks.txt and UnicodeData.txt, but not ArabicShaping.txt and Scripts.txt. Should I replace those as well? Are they used by FC? I just can't tell from my testing.

BTW, FC behaves very nicely when I've replaced Blocks.txt and UnicodeData.txt. I can overwrite them at any time, and at the next FC startup, the user interface is correctly modified to show that shape of that version of Unicode. However, there might be some places that I have not seen where ArabicShaping.txt and Scripts.txt affect the user interface.
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Re: Version of Unicode?

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

There is no harm in copying the files, but unless you work on esoteric scripts it's unlikely to make any difference.

Use a freeware utility like ExamDiff to compare different versions.
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Re: Version of Unicode?

Post by ClintGoss »

This has worked like a charm!

I now have a handy script that lets me reconfigure FC to any Unicode version from 1.1 through 12.0 (12.1 tomorrow bright and early!) This is very helpful to me, in determining the block coverage of older fonts I sometimes work with, based on the version of Unicode for which that font was designed. BTW, I had to re-create Blocks.txt for some of the earlier versions to fix the format, and there were a few nigglies in those early files such as one or two out-of-sequence ranges.

It occurred to me that I could use this to handle various carvings of the PUA (MUFI vs SMuFL vs SIL etc) ... so ...

Question: Is it OK to hack Blocks.txt to carve up PUA, PUA-A and PUA-B into smaller chunks to suit my needs?
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Re: Version of Unicode?

Post by Erwin Denissen »

FontCreator doesn't depend on the blocks information, so you can edit it, but some calculations use hard-coded blocks. So no guarantee all works as you expect, but feel free to experiment.
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Re: Version of Unicode?

Post by ClintGoss »

I currently depend on the behavior of FC Pro 11.5 in using UnicodeData.txt and Blocks.txt to configure the version of Unicode that FC uses. I even have a script to copy in various versions of those files to the user directory. This lets me view a font under the version of Unicode it was created to determine block coverage.

Question: Does FC Pro 12 work this way? (I seem to recall a mention of moving this data into the registry?)

BTW, I currently have these version of the Unicode files (some reconstructed / backwards engineered), if anyone needs them ...

1.1 or 1.1.5 June 1993
2.0 or 2.0.14 July 1996
2.1 or 2.1.9 May 1998
3.2 or 3.2.0 March 2002
4.0 or 4.0.0 April 2003
4.1 or 4.1.0 March 20005
5.2 or 5.2.0 October 2009
6.0 or 6.0.0 October 2010
7.0 or 7.0.0 June 2014
8.0 or 8.0.0 June 2015
9.0 or 9.0.0 June 2016
10.0 or 10.0.0 June 2017
11.0 or 11.0.0 June 2018
12.0 or 12.0.0 March 2019
12.1 or 12.1.0 May 7, 2019
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Re: Version of Unicode?

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

The User Data files are stored in a different location in FontCreator 12, than they are for FontCreator 11.5.

See Tools, Options, Advanced, Open User Data folder. You may need to modify your script.
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Re: Version of Unicode?

Post by ClintGoss »

Just got set up with v12 ... works like a charm ... thanks!!
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