Arial Unicode MS

Arial Unicode MS是一种无衬线的 TrueType类型电脑字体。

概要

Arial Unicode MS是电脑字体Arial的拓展版本之一。比起Arial，它的线高更大，省略了字符间距，添加了足够的字形来覆盖Unicode 2.1版本，因此它支持大多数微软代码页，但也导致其庞大的容量 (22 MB)。 它包括表意符号排版表，但和 Arial不同的是，它在 14–18 [[点]时]不需要抗锯齿平滑处理，而且它只有正体字符，而没有斜体版本。

Arial Unicode MS 通常随Microsoft Office发布，但它也随Mac OS X v10.5捆绑发布。但微软许可Ascender公司以“Arial Unicode”的名称进行单独出售。

由于使用同样的引擎进行描摹而没有根据不同尺寸进行调整， Arial和Arial Unicode MS中的字符看起来有些许宽和圆。 Arial Unicode MS横排文本看起来具有更宽的线间距，因为它拥有较大的字框 (为显示一些拓展字符Arial Unicode MS需要更大的空间) 和描摹限制，而字符形状保持不变。 Arial Unicode MS本身缺乏间距对定义的性质也影响了一些描摹过程中的字符间距离。

历史和传播

Arial是由罗宾·尼古拉斯(Robin Nicholas)和帕特里希亚·萨云德在1982年设计，并在1990年作为TrueType字体发布的。1993年到1999年间，由Monotype公司的技术人员拓展为 Arial Unicode MS并在1998年作为TrueType字体单独发布并卖给微软。

Monotype Imaging目前扔拥有Arial 和 Arial Unicode MS商标，但微软持有字体的专有许可权。目前微软将字体许可转给Ascender Corporation销售。而且事实表明它还授权给了 苹果公司，因为苹果在2007年10月16日宣布其新版操作系统Mac OS X v10.5 ("Leopard")将捆绑Arial Unicode字体。有意思的是，Leopard也预定搭载其他 several other 原先微软独占的字体，包括Microsoft Sans Serif, Tahoma 和 Wingdings。

From mid-2001 through mid-2002, Arial Unicode MS was also available as a separate download for licensed users of the standalone version of Microsoft Publisher 2000 SR-1, which did not ship with the font. The freely downloadable version was withdrawn after Microsoft Publisher 2002, which included the font, began shipping. The withdrawal coincided with the withdrawal of the free downloads of Microsoft's "Core fonts for the Web". Numerous companies, organizations, educational establishments and even governments were directing users to the download without referencing the need for a valid Publisher or Office license or any Microsoft operating system.

版本

Version 0.84 was supplied with Microsoft Office 2000 and the standalone versions of that suite's applications—except Publisher 2000 SR-1. It includes 51180 glyphs (38911 characters), supports 32 code pages, and contains Latin and Han Ideographic OpenType layout tables. The code pages supported are 1250 (Latin 2: East Europe), 1251 (Cyrillic), 1252 (Latin 1), 1253 (Greek), 1254 (Turkish), 1255 (Hebrew), 1256 (Arabic), 1257 (Windows Baltic), Code page 1258 (Vietnamese), 437 (US), 708 (Arabic; ASMO 708), 737 (Greek), 775 (MS-DOS Baltic), 850 (WE/Latin 1), 852 (Latin 2), 855 (IBM Cyrillic; primarily Russian), 857 (MS-DOS IBM Turkish), 860 (MS-DOS Portuguese), 861 (MS-DOS Icelandic), 862 (Hebrew), 863 (MS-DOS Canadian French), 864 (Arabic), 865 (MS-DOS Nordic), 866 (MS-DOS Russian), 869 (IBM Greek), 874 (Thai), 932 (JIS/Japan), 936 (Chinese: Simplified), 949 (Korean Wansung), 950 (Chinese: Traditional), "Macintosh Character Set" (US Roman), and "Windows OEM Character Set". It covers all code points containing non-control characters in Unicode 2.0.

Version 0.86 has the same coverage and support as 0.84.

Versions 1.00 and 1.01 were supplied with Microsoft Office 2002 (Microsoft Office XP), Microsoft Office 2003 and the standalone versions of those suites' applications. It includes 50,377 glyphs (38,917 characters), which reduces Combining Diacritical Marks to 72, increases Miscellaneous Technical characters to 123, increases Private Use Area characters to 43, reduces Spacing Modifier Letters to 57. 1361 (Korean Johab) was added. It adds layout tables for Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kana (Hiragana & Katakana), Kannada, and Tamil. Its Han Ideographic tables were updated to support vertical writing. It covers all code points containing non-control characters in Unicode 2.1.

错误

Demonstration of the double-width diacritic bug in Arial Unicode MS. The first row shows how Arial Unicode MS incorrectly renders a diacritic that is correctly placed between the letters "k" and "p". The second row shows how the diacritic is rendered in the correct position only if placed after the "p". The third row shows how the correct placement is rendered in TITUS Cyberbit Basic, which does not have the bug.

All versions of Arial Unicode MS deal with double-width diacritic characters incorrectly, drawing them too far to the left by one character width. According to the Unicode Standard 4.0.0, section 7.7 combining double diacritics go between the two characters to be marked. However, to make text look correct in Arial Unicode MS, the double-width diacritic must be placed after both characters to be marked. This means that it is not possible to make text that renders these characters correctly in both Arial Unicode MS and in other (correctly designed) Unicode fonts.

This bug affects the rendering of text written in the 国际音标 and in ALA-LC Romanization for non-Latin-script languages.

The last first and last second letters in Latin small ligatures fi, fl, ffi, ffl, long st, st are not connected.

The Arabic Five Pointed Star (U+066D) has 6 points instead of 5.

参见

Other well-known fonts with Unicode coverage include Bitstream Cyberbit, TITUS Cyberbit Basic, Code2000, Doulos SIL, Lucida Sans Unicode, Free software Unicode typefaces, and Unicode fonts.

外部链接

• Font catalogue entries: Microsoft (1.01), Microsoft (0.84), Ascender Corporation.