Universally applicable diacriticals

[John Smith]

On Mon, 14 Apr 1997, J. Kingston Cowart wrote:

> I wonder if anyone is thinking of a way to create software by which one
> might universally apply all possible diacriticals to any existing font?

I have written a program to do more-or-less this. "All possible
diacriticals" is perhaps a bit strong, but it will place one or more
*existing* accents on any *existing* character in a given font. Since
high-quality lookalikes for Times, Palatino, and many other fonts are now
available as free software (as part of the Ghostscript package), it should
soon be posible to create and distribute legal, free fonts with any
desired set of accented characters.

> It would be a formidable undertaking--and a most welcome development. 

When you get down to it, it isn't all that formidable, and I'm surprised
it hasn't been done before. My program is still under development, but you
may expect a beta release within weeks. I also intend to make free fonts
available in various suitable encodings -- CSX and Norman, for example.
This may take a little longer, as it will be necessary to prepare
different versions for different requirements -- PC and Mac, Truetype and
PostScript.

John Smith

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