Can webfonts be non-utf compatible?

Question

I'm not sure what else to blame... But I've tried everything, including reconverting original tff to web fonts using squirrel converter.

The font in question is this: http://www.fonts2u.com/bolnisi.font The description it says: Unicode BMP only whatever this means :)

On the demo, I see that text in html had been entered in latin characters. When I use Georgian utf letters: ქართული. This font never applies!

Example: http://mac.idev.ge:800/breakmedia/ Look at the header, only numbers are transformed into this font. Rest is normal serif.

CSS:

@font-face {
    font-family: 'bolnisiregular';
    src: url('font/bolnisi-webfont.eot');
    src: url('font/bolnisi-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'),
         url('font/bolnisi-webfont.woff') format('woff'),
         url('font/bolnisi-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'),
         url('font/bolnisi-webfont.svg#bolnisiregular') format('svg');
    font-weight: normal;
    font-style: normal;
}

html *
{
   font-family: 'bolnisiregular' !important;
}

What is happening here? any ideas?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 15 '14 at 12:11

1

That's a typical "hack" font. As you can see on the font page you link to, the glyphs are not at the character code they're supposed to belong to. The glyph at the code point for "i" is "ი". That's not the correct glyph for "i". The glyph for "i" is supposed look like "i". The glyph "ი" belongs at code point U+10D8, the code point for the Georgian letter "IN".

Such font hacks are/were used before the code points for that language became officially ratified in the Unicode standard, and/or for software in that language which does not (yet) support Unicode. I.e., sometime in the dark ages there existed no official encoding for the Georgian language, yet people in Georgia wanted to see Georgian glyphs on their screens. So arbitrary ASCII code points were overloaded with Georgian glyphs. Strictly speaking, that font is broken.

answered Jul 15 '14 at 12:11

deceze

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Makes a lot of sense. Thanks for explaining :) This font for example: http://www.fonts2u.com/dejavu-sans-bold.font?ptext=%E1%83%91%E1%83%9A%E1%83%90&submit=Submit displays georgian letters correctly, but I cannot find letters in the character map... so how does this one work? – Jul 15 '14 at 12:13
Use the drop down at the top of the charmap and choose the Georgian section. It's simply not displaying the whole charmap all at once, because it's huge. – deceze Jul 15 '14 at 12:14
Hey, you seem to know a lot about fonts, can you help? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24759286/web-font-doesnt-get-applied-font-face – Jul 15 '14 at 13:20

Enethion · Answer 2 · 2014-07-15T12:15:05.530

0

This specific font has Latin letters only which you can see in Character map section below the example text on fonts2u.com.

edited Jul 15 '14 at 12:15

answered Jul 15 '14 at 12:09

Enethion

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That's what I thought. Is there a way to remap it to unicode? – Jul 15 '14 at 12:10
AFAIK that would be complicated. It is possible using JavaScript (or better jQuery), but you would need to create table of chars with Latin letters as keys and Georgian letters as values and then read whole text letter-by-letter "translating" it with this table. – Enethion Jul 15 '14 at 12:13
Hey, your answer was short and to the point. But I think other one offers more information, which was exactly that I needed! SO +1 – Jul 15 '14 at 12:20
1

That's ok. I don't do it for rep :P – Enethion Jul 15 '14 at 13:32

Can webfonts be non-utf compatible?

2 Answers2