Printing/Font Notes

There are not many fonts which support the whole range of Unicode characters (which means the fonts do not include a "glyph" for each of the 65536 code points of the Unicode table.) One such font is Arial Unicode which explains its wide usage. But at the same time this font is not very pretty to look at. Also, the few fonts supporting all Unicode characters are mostly not suitable for the wide range of publishing needs; and they are not freely available.

Many font problems can be solved, or at least explained, through an understanding of the encoding and use of the keyboard. Here are some basic hints:

Font Encoding: For typing (using, showing, printing) any letters/glyphs not contained in standard western alphabets, the font used must be encoded according in Unicode. (That means your application must support Unicode text in order to access letters other than the standard alphabet.) Most Linux applications provide basic Unicode support. You will, however, need some way of entering Unicode text into your document.

Font/Glyph Keyboarding: For example, if you wish to use the letters in the font that are needed for the Czech language, install support for a Czech keyboard layout.

If you are using Linux and want to enter characters that are not supported by an available system keyboard layout, the KMFL program may be useful. KMFL is an input method that is compatible with Keyman keyboards. (KMFL is installed by default on Ubuntu.)

Font Rendering:

Font Hinting:

Font Kerning:

Font Substitution:

Character Substitution: