APL Font: Difference between revisions

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==Font Issues==
==Font Issues==
Even if you have an APL font installed, that may not be the end of the story. Each font designer decides what glyphs to display and for which characters. Also, some implementations of supposedly unicode fonts don't always display the same glyphs in the same places or in the same way. The '''SimPL Medium''' font, which comes with NARS2000, will display some characters with different glyphs than are displayed by the font '''APL385 Unicode'''.  For example, these are the underlined letters A to Z, which are valid identifiers in APL. <u>A</u> <u>B</u> <u>C</u> <u>D</u> <u>E</u> <u>F</u> <u>G</u> <u>H</u> <u>I</u> <u>J</u> <u>K</u> <u>L</u> <u>M</u> <u>N</u> <u>O</u> <u>P</u> <u>Q</u> <u>R</u> <u>S</u> <u>T</u> <u>U</u> <u>V</u> <u>W</u> <u>X</u> <u>Y</u> <u>Z</u>. Now, to display these characters in ''APL385 Unicode'', the characters use code positions 9398 through 9423, or 0x24B6 through 0x24CF, which show up as &#9398; &#9399; &#9400; &#9401; &#9402; &#9403; &#9404; &#9405; &#9406; &#9407; &#9408; &#9409; &#9410; &#9411; &#9412; &#9413; &#9414; &#9415; &#9416; &#9417; &#9418; &#9419; &#9420; &#9421; &#9422; &#9423;, which, while not the same, is very close.  
Even if you have an APL font installed, that may not be the end of the story. Each font designer decides what glyphs to display and for which characters. Also, some implementations of supposedly Unicode fonts don't always display the same glyphs in the same places or in the same way. The '''SimPL Medium''' font, which comes with NARS2000, will display some characters with different glyphs than are displayed by the font '''APL385 Unicode'''.  For example, these are the underlined letters A to Z, which are valid identifiers in APL: <u>A</u> <u>B</u> <u>C</u> <u>D</u> <u>E</u> <u>F</u> <u>G</u> <u>H</u> <u>I</u> <u>J</u> <u>K</u> <u>L</u> <u>M</u> <u>N</u> <u>O</u> <u>P</u> <u>Q</u> <u>R</u> <u>S</u> <u>T</u> <u>U</u> <u>V</u> <u>W</u> <u>X</u> <u>Y</u> <u>Z</u>. Now, to display these characters in ''APL385 Unicode'', the characters use code positions 9398 through 9423, or 0x24B6 through 0x24CF, which show up as &#9398; &#9399; &#9400; &#9401; &#9402; &#9403; &#9404; &#9405; &#9406; &#9407; &#9408; &#9409; &#9410; &#9411; &#9412; &#9413; &#9414; &#9415; &#9416; &#9417; &#9418; &#9419; &#9420; &#9421; &#9422; &#9423;, which, while not the same, is very close.  When copying underlined APL characters to the clipboard, you may convert them to lowercase by first setting the user preference "Underbar alphabet converted to lowercase".


The standard '''Arial''' font doesn't even have a built-in set of underlined characters, nor does SimPL. (Yet note some glyphs, as shown below, that are used by NARS2000, are not present in APL385.)
The standard '''Arial''' font doesn't even have a built-in set of underlined characters, nor does SimPL. (Yet note some glyphs, as shown below, that are used by NARS2000, are not present in APL385.)


Also, the settings for Unicode for APL symbols, which are listed as being 0x2300 - 0x23F3, do not necessarily appear - or appear the same - in all APL fonts.  
Also, the settings for Unicode for APL symbols, which are listed as being 0x2300 - 0x23F3, do not necessarily appear - or appear the same - in all APL fonts.
 
==Extra APL Glyphs==
==Extra APL Glyphs==



Revision as of 15:29, 16 May 2013

Default Font

The default APL font for the site is SImPL medium, SImPL, or APL385 Unicode.

If the APL characters in the articles don't display correctly, you can obtain a copy of the SImPL medium font by downloading the current NARS2000 binary, or the SImPL font from here, or the APL385 Unicode font from here.

If they still don't display correctly, download FireFox.

Font Issues

Even if you have an APL font installed, that may not be the end of the story. Each font designer decides what glyphs to display and for which characters. Also, some implementations of supposedly Unicode fonts don't always display the same glyphs in the same places or in the same way. The SimPL Medium font, which comes with NARS2000, will display some characters with different glyphs than are displayed by the font APL385 Unicode. For example, these are the underlined letters A to Z, which are valid identifiers in APL: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z. Now, to display these characters in APL385 Unicode, the characters use code positions 9398 through 9423, or 0x24B6 through 0x24CF, which show up as Ⓐ Ⓑ Ⓒ Ⓓ Ⓔ Ⓕ Ⓖ Ⓗ Ⓘ Ⓙ Ⓚ Ⓛ Ⓜ Ⓝ Ⓞ Ⓟ Ⓠ Ⓡ Ⓢ Ⓣ Ⓤ Ⓥ Ⓦ Ⓧ Ⓨ Ⓩ, which, while not the same, is very close. When copying underlined APL characters to the clipboard, you may convert them to lowercase by first setting the user preference "Underbar alphabet converted to lowercase".

The standard Arial font doesn't even have a built-in set of underlined characters, nor does SimPL. (Yet note some glyphs, as shown below, that are used by NARS2000, are not present in APL385.)

Also, the settings for Unicode for APL symbols, which are listed as being 0x2300 - 0x23F3, do not necessarily appear - or appear the same - in all APL fonts.

Extra APL Glyphs

While any Unicode APL font will display all of the standard APL glyphs, NARS2000 uses (or has plans to use) some extra glyphs not found in all Unicode APL fonts such as

Name Symbol Unicode
Code Point
Keystroke Description
Section § 0167 or 0x00A7 Alt-S Multiset Symmetric Difference
Pi π 0960 or 0x03C0 Alt-p Prime Decomposition and Number-theoretic
Root 8730 or 0x221A Alt-R Square Root and Nth Root
Infinity 8734 or 0x221E Alt-f Infinity
Mismatch 8802 or 0x2262 Alt-@ Mismatch
Left-shoe-underbar 8838 or 0x2286 Alt-Z Subset of
Right-shoe-underbar 8839 or 0x2287 Alt-X Superset of
Circle-middle-dot 8857 or 0x2299 Alt-? Null operator
Quad-colon 9056 or 0x2360 Alt-_ Variant operator
Dieresis-downtack 9057 or 0x2361 Alt-N Convolution operator
Dieresis-del 9058 or 0x2362 Alt-G Dual operator
Dieresis-star 9059 or 0x2363 Alt-P Power operator
Dieresis-jot 9060 or 0x2364 Alt-J Rank operator
Dieresis-circle 9061 or 0x2365 Alt-O Composition operator
Down-shoe-stile 9062 or 0x2366 Alt-m Multiset operator
Dieresis-tilde 9064 or 0x2368 Alt-T Commute operator
Zilde 9068 or 0x236C Alt-} Empty simple numeric vector
Stile-tilde 9069 or 0x236D Alt-M Partition operator

= Not currently implemented.

All of the above glyphs may be found in SImPL medium, all but the Infinity symbol in SImPL, and all but the Null operator in APL385 Unicode.