Stephen Fryer wrote:

> I'm not sure what the problem is. Everything except the "hooked o"
> are easily available in the standard Windows TTF fonts, like
> Times New Roman, Arial, etc.

The problem is that not everyone is using, can use, or even wants
to use, a mail reader that relies on a few TrueType fonts on one
version of one OS. Largely, the only thing we can rely on people
having is the ability to read and write in ISO Latin-1 (and that's
not really very reliable; many people, especially those using Web
mailers, can't set their character set or change the interpretation
of a message they're reading); and Latin-1 doesn't have a hooked-o
or an OE ligature (one of the Windows extensions to Latin-1 does,
but no one else uses that extension; MS isn't consistent about using
that extension; and all their software refuses to let anyone know
they're using an extension, instead lying and claiming it's using
Latin-1)

I see this misunderstanding a great deal. Choosing a font for a
message is only useful if the font data goes along with the message,
like a printed page or a PostScript file. In most electronic
communication, only codes representing the message get sent. In
most mail, the best you can do is attach the name of the encoding.
In an HTML file, you can mention the encoding and give a hint as
to what font you'd like it rendered with, but you can't rely on any
recipient taking that hint. Font makers who put special characters
in odd positions are inventing their own private encoding; you can't
expect everyone to understand their secret code.

I hope this wasn't too curt, but I just had to fight this out for
my Ancient Greek study group.

Erich