Language support

Web pages on a FAIRY server may be authored in any encoding scheme that is supported by the server (Unicode, single-byte code pages, or multi-byte code pages), and a few that are not supported by the server (e.g. TSCII, ISCII).

All formats are equally suitable because FAIRY converts the text content first to Unicode, and then to the most suitable format for a browser. Different browsers may thus receive a web page in different formats, depending on what they are able to handle. It may be code paged, Unicode, pre-composed text, re-encoded high ansi, re-encoded low ansi text, or graphics.

FAIRY supports languages that are supported by either Uniscribe/GSP or OpenType Layout. We have done this in an extendible way, so that you may download GSP language modules when they become available.

When FAIRY processes a text, it is smart about matching text, languages and fonts. A list of fallback fonts is used in cases where text on a page is set in a font that does not support a language (or when a font is not specified).

This all makes for ease of use. An existing web site with text of a given code page will thus be legible in browsers on all platforms. There is no need to touch the existing pages. It just works.

There is also support for localizing pages, by allowing specific text blocks within a page to be translated without having to create copies of a page. Changes to the page structure and other non textual information is thus much easer since this information is only found in one place. Browser of specific nationalities will automatically see the text that is most appropriate for them. A user from Sweden would thus see swedish text content, or the default language if non is provided.

Please note that to support a language, you need a font that is designed for that language. Preferably, this should be an OpenType Layout font with Unicode encoded glyphs and all the OTL features needed to support a language. However, a custom encoded font (e.g. an ISCII encoded font) would work as well, but without the glyph shaping and positioning that you get with OTL.

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