This document is an introduction to Bitstream(R) Cyberbit.(tm)
It tells you what Cyberbit is, why it was developed, how it may be used and how to
install Bitstream Cyberbit in Microsoft(R) Windows(R) 95 and
Windows NT.
Bitstream Cyberbit is a TrueType(R) font. It is an international font,
containing characters from many languages. Each character is encoded with its Unicode
value, according to Unicode(R) 2.0 standards.
Cyberbit was developed by Bitstream to provide Unicode Consortium members with a
test font. It is therefore distributed freely to customers that need advanced multilingual
fonts for testing and other non-commercial uses. Customers that wish to use Cyberbit
for other purposes must license the font from Bitstream.
Please see the License.wri file that accompanies Cyberbit for details. If
you install and use Cyberbit, you are bound by the terms of that License.
Before using Cyberbit, you need to install it in Windows 95 or NT; add multilanguage
support in Windows; and add keyboard support in Windows. To view Unicode characters
in World Wide Web documents, you need a Unicode-enabled browser and you need to choose
Cyberbit as the default font in your browser. All relevant procedures are documented
in this guide.
Note that Cyberbit is a Unicode-encoded font. To use Cyberbit effectively, you will need Unicode-savvy applications or operating system. For more information on whether your applications or operating system supports Unicode, please refer to the appropriate user guides for those products. Note that Microsoft Windows 9X is not a Unicode-based operating system. While it is possible to install Cyberbit in Windows 9X, performance may be slow, and only Unicode-savvy applications (such as MS Word97) will allow you access to all the characters in the font.
An example of an optimal system configuration for Cyberbit would be Microsoft
Windows NT version 4.0 (or later) with Service Pack 2 and a "Far East"
language pack installed; 32MB of RAM (or more), and Unicode enabled software applications.
Cyberbit is Bitstream's Unicode-based international large font. Based on one of our most popular and readable type designs (Dutch(tm) 801 BT), it includes many of the typographic characters for most of the world's major languages.
This release includes the roman weight of Dutch 801 BT, a "serif" font. (A serif font has small finishing strokes at the end of the main stems, arms, and tails of characters, while a sanserif font does not.) The font is in TrueType format for Windows. Future releases will provide support for "sanserif" fonts, other platforms, other font formats, and even more languages. Bitstream Cyberbit is a work in progress.
Dynalab supplied the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) characters in Cyberbit. Dynalab, a Taiwan-based font foundry, creates high-quality Asian fonts celebrated as being among the best in the industry. The Thai characters in Cyberbit were supplied by Thaisoft.
Cyberbit was developed by Bitstream to provide Unicode Consortium members with a large Unicode-encoded font to use for testing and development purposes. Cyberbit is made available free to members of the consortium for non-commercial use. Cyberbit is a valuable testing tool for hardware and software developers working on Unicode based devices and products.
In addition, people all over the world have their own language-specific versions of Windows (or other operating systems) that provide them with the font support they need to write, view, and print their own languages. Problems arise when someone wants to send you a document or to create a home page for you to view. The other person doesn't have access to all the characters she or he needs to make it readable for the rest of the world; and you don't have the characters you need to view her or his language.
The solution: one font with the languages already in it! Enter Cyberbit. If authors create their documents using Cyberbit, and viewers all have it on their systems, everyone can view and print multilingual documents exactly as they were created. The "World Wide" Web will finally be worldwide!
This release of Cyberbit includes all the characters needed to support the major languages of North and South America; Eastern, Central, and Western Europe; the Middle East; Scandinavia; Russia; Greece; Turkey; Thailand; Vietnam; China; Korea; and Japan. Future releases of Cyberbit will add support for other languages.
NOTE: that while every attempt has been made to provide all the Unicode characters within given ranges, the characters in Cyberbit were implemented based on the commonly-used codepages for their particular languages. There may be instances where Cyberbit is missing a number of characters from the Unicode range for a particular language when those characters were not specified in the original Windows codepage for that language.
Cyberbit has characters from the following code pages:
| Code Page | Supported Languages |
| Arabic* | Arabic |
| Cyrillic | Cyrillic |
| Greek | Greek |
| Hebrew* | Hebrew |
| Japanese* | Japanese |
| Korean* | Korean |
| Latin 1 | Western European and English |
| Latin 2 | Eastern and Central European |
| Latin 5 | Turkish |
| Latin 6 | Baltic Rim |
| Simplified Chinese* | Simplified Chinese |
| Traditional Chinese* | Traditional Chinese |
| Thai* | Thai |
| Vietnamese* | Vietnamese |
* Characters may not appear in the USA or PanEuropean versions of Windows 95.
Note: Cyberbit contains full PANOSE support.
Note: to view two-byte languages such as Kanji (Japanese), you will need to use a double-byte enabled application or internet browser.
Most importantly, Bitstream has "delta-hinted" its most popular text sizes (10 and 12 point, at screen resolutions of 96 and 120 dpi; and 14 point, at a screen resolution of 96 dpi) for the Cyrillic, Greek, Latin 1, Latin 2, Latin 5, and Latin 6 characters. Delta-hinting means that Bitstream designers have fine tuned Cyberbit for the best possible screen quality and readability. The Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters in Cyberbit have not been delta-hinted.
Cyberbit includes characters from many Unicode ranges, including:
Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, Spacing Modifier Letters, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew Extended (A and B blocks combined), Thai, Latin Extended Additional, General Punctuation, Currency Symbols, Letterlike Symbols, Number Forms, Arrows, Mathematical Operators, Miscellaneous Technical, Box Drawing, Block Elements, Geometric Shapes, Miscellaneous Dingbats, Alphabetic Presentation Forms, Combining Diacritical Marks, Enclosed Alphanumerics, Arabic, Arabic Presentation Forms-A and -B, CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) Symbols and Punctuation, Hiragana, Katakana, Bopomofo, Hangul Compatibility Jamo, Enclosed CJK Letters and Months, CJK Compatibility, Hangul, CJK Unified Ideographs, CJK Compatibility Ideographs, CJK Compatibility Forms, Small Form Variants, and Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms.
Note that Cyberbit may not necessarily include all the characters from these ranges.
Bitstream can customize Cyberbit for you. For details, contact a Bitstream representative, at 617-497-6222 (worldwide), at 011-31-20-5200-300 (in Europe), or by e-mail (at cyberbit@bitstream.com).
Also, refer to the file orders.wri. It has a form that lets you tell us how you would like Bitstream to customize Cyberbit for you.
Cyberbit comes with the following:
Before starting, review the license agreement. Refer to the license.wri file.
To use the utility and software, you need
Note: Only the CD-ROM version of Windows 95 includes multilanguage support,
which you need to access and view all the characters in the Cyberbit font. If you
have the disk version of Windows 95, contact Microsoft Corporation to obtain multilanguage
support.
Note: If using Windows NT 4.0, you need to install "Service Pack 2" and one "Far East Language Pack." You can download it from the Microsoft web site. Contact Microsoft Corporation for more information.
This section discusses the following topics:
Follow the instructions below to install Bitstream Cyberbit, a TrueType font, in Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0.
Note: To make the font appear in your Windows application, you may have to
reselect your printer in the application.
To use the Cyberbit font, either use PanEuropean Windows 95 or turn on Multilanguage Support.
Follow the steps below to add multilanguage support in Windows 95. Note that you may need your Windows 95 installation CD.
Note that only the CD-ROM version of Windows 95 includes multilanguage support, which you need to access and view the characters in the Cyberbit font. If you have the disk version of Windows 95, contact Microsoft Corporation to obtain multilanguage support.
You may need to add keyboard support for the languages you want to use with the Cyberbit font.
Follow the steps below to add keyboard support in Windows 95. Note that you may need your Windows 95 installation CD.
You may need to add support for the languages you want to use with the Cyberbit font. If you wish to use Asian fonts (if you wish to access the Asian characters in Cyberbit, or you wish to use CyberCJK) you must install a "Far East Language Pack."
Follow the steps below to add multilanguage and keyboard support in Windows NT 4.0. Note that you may need your Windows NT 4.0 installation media (CD or disks).
Note that if you are using Windows NT 4.0, you need to install Service Pack 2. You can download it from the Microsoft web site. You also need to install a Far East language pack (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and so on). Contact Microsoft Corporation for more information.
If you have Windows NT 4.0, you can access Far East languages if you add the Far East language kit to Windows NT.
The language kit adds support for character sets, including double-byte character sets.
To add a language kit, follow the directions in the README.TXT file in the Langpack
folder on the NT 4.0 CD. Remember that you need to choose a Far East Language (Chinese,
Japanese, Korean, and so on)
To view an HTML (HyperText Markup Language) document that has been formatted with Unicode characters, set up Cyberbit as the default font in your browser.
You must have a Unicode-enabled browser to view and print Cyberbit characters. In addition, to view and print Unicode characters from your browser, the HTML documents you're viewing must use standard Unicode encoding. For example, € is the standard HTML, Unicode encoding for new European Currency Symbol (the Euro).
The following examples detail how to change the proportional font in Netscape Communicator,(tm) Netscape Navigator,(tm) and Microsoft Internet Explorer.(tm) If you use a different browser, consult the printed or online documentation that came with it.
Note that some steps below have options, which means the steps depend on the version of the browser you have.
Note: You will have to repeat this procedure to view characters in a different language.
Cyberbit comes with a series of sample documents. Use these documents to test whether or not you installed Cyberbit correctly and added multilanguage and keyboard support.
If using Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0, open Cyberbit.doc, Cyberbase.doc or CyberCJK.doc in WordPad depending on which font you installed..
If you have Microsoft Word 97 and Windows NT 4.0, open 97Cyberbit.doc, 97Cyberbase.doc or 97CyberCJK.doc in Word 97.
Bitstream Cyberbit includes a 'GSUB' (glyph substitution) table for Arabic. This table is a TrueType Open table. It guarantees that an application automatically substitutes the correct variant of an Arabic character, depending on the character's position in the word (initial, medial, or final) or whether it is the only character of a word (isolated).
The BASE (baseline) table is a TrueType Open table that contains information about "baseline positioning" and "character extents" for language scripts.
Baseline positioning is an imaginary line that characters without descenders (such as all the characters in the word "Baseline") rest on. Character extent information tells you the tallest and lowest characters in each language script, from which you can determine the maximum height of a typeset line. From this information, a word processor capable of interpreting BASE table data can adjust the leading (interline spacing) for that language script. This keeps lines of text from being squeezed together or set too wide apart.
The BASE table in the Cyberbit font contains extent information for each language script in the font.
Extent information is useful for some scripts, such as Thai, that have very tall characters. If the tops of very tall characters in Arabic or Thai are clipped, the application you are using does not access the BASE table's extent data.
Baseline positioning is included for all Far East language scripts, except Thai. The baseline information shifts the Far East characters up. If Far East characters are positioned lower than expected on the line, the application you are using does not access the BASE table's baseline data.
Again, it is up to the word processing or desktop publishing application to use
baseline table information. At the time of the Cyberbit 2.0 release, no application
had implemented the use of the BASE table, so Bitstream could not test it.
This section discusses the following topics:
Because the font is so large (almost 14MB), it might take two or more minutes to load it the first time you use it in Windows 95 or NT. Also, the font might take a minute or so to display characters at a different point size.
To use Cyberbit, you must have at least 16MB of RAM (random access memory). Include more memory to gain faster access to Cyberbit characters.
If you find that Cyberbit characters do not appear in Windows NT 4.0 applications, you need to install Service Pack 2 (or higher). You can download it from the Microsoft web site.
You also need to install a Far East language pack (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and so on). See the section above entitled "Adding Multilanguage and Keyboard Support in Windows NT 4.0."
Contact Microsoft for more information.
The Far East characters appear lighter than other characters in the Cyberbit font. Bitstream used these Far East characters because Dynalab's light CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) font had the fullest range of characters. Bitstream intends to get better suited Far East characters in a future release.
Kerning, or spacing between characters, for Cyberbit is supported for the first 128 Latin characters only. Future releases will support kerning for more characters.
From the U.S. or PanEuropean version of Windows 95, characters from the Cyberbit font do not print if the font is sent as an outline font to an HP LaserJet 4 printer, and if you use the printer driver that shipped with Windows 95.
Solve this as follows in Windows 95:
If the tops of very tall or long characters in Arabic or Thai are clipped, the application you are using does not access the BASE table's extent data. For details, see the earlier section, "Support for the Baseline Table in Cyberbit."
In the Traditional Chinese version of Windows 95, you can correctly locate the following characters, using Unicode IDs, within the font; however, in standard Windows 95 applications, an incorrect character displays and prints.
| Unicode | Code Page 950 |
| Value | Encoding Value |
| 2569 | F9E4 |
| 9069 | BE41 |
Cyberbit does not contain the full range of Hangul syllables. It does contain all the characters in Korean Code Page 949. The Hangul syllables that are included are mapped twice, once to the Unicode IDs in the AC00 to D7A3 range, based on Unicode 2.0 specifications; and once to Unicode IDs in the 3400 to 3D2F range, based on Unicode 1.1 specs. The second mapping allows the Korean characters in the font to work in Korean Windows 95.
The Character Map in Windows NT 4.0 shows only those characters in the AC00 to D7FF range. It does not show the Unicode 1.1, Hangul characters in the 3400-3D2F range.
The Vietnamese version of Windows 95 is not Unicode based. Cyberbit and Cyberbase contain the characters needed to compose and view Vietnamese text but they are Unicode encoded. Vietnames documents created in non-Unicode applications may not image correctly using Cyberbit/Cyberbase because of this discrepancy.
Some Windows 95 applications, like WordPad, fully support multilingual fonts. These applications use the standard Windows 95 Fonts dialog box.
In this Fonts dialog box is a Script field that lists the language scripts (or code pages) associated with each font.
In WordPad's font menu, the Bitstream Cyberbit Original font looks like this:
| Font Name | Script |
| Bitstream Cyberbit | Arabic |
| Bitstream Cyberbit | Baltic |
| Bitstream Cyberbit | Central European |
| Bitstream Cyberbit | CHINESE_BIG5 |
| Bitstream Cyberbit | CHINESE_GB2312 |
| Bitstream Cyberbit | Cyrillic |
| Bitstream Cyberbit | Greek |
| Bitstream Cyberbit | Hangul |
| Bitstream Cyberbit | Hebrew |
| Bitstream Cyberbit | Japanese |
| Bitstream Cyberbit | Thai* |
| Bitstream Cyberbit | Turkish |
| Bitstream Cyberbit | Western |
* The Thai script appears as a blank on the Script list of the USA or PanEuropean versions of Windows 95.
Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean (Hangul) are listed in WordPad's script list, but you can only use them in the Far East versions of Windows 95's WordPad. Note that Vietnamese does not appear on the script list of most versions of Windows 95 and Windows NT4.0.
If your Windows application does not support language scripts, contact the company that makes your application for more information on how to use multilingual fonts.
If you have Windows NT 4.0, you can access Far East languages if you add the Far East language kit to Windows NT.
The language kit adds support for character sets, including double-byte character sets.
To add a language kit, follow the directions below. These directions are based on installing the kit in a Western version (such as USA or PanEuropean) of Windows NT 4.0.
Note that Microsoft Service Pack 2(or later) for NT fixes some problems associated
with accessing multiple character sets in NT. You can download Service Pack 2 from
the Microsoft web site. Contact Microsoft for more information.
After installing Service Pack 2 (or later), you can see the language scripts available in Cyberbit from the Character Map accessory and from WordPad.
215 First Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
USA
617-497-6222
http://www.bitstream.com
cyberbit@bitstream.com
support@bitstream.com
Prinsengracht 659-661
1016 HV Amsterdam
The Netherlands
+31-20-5200-300
Cyberbit (and its associated files -- Cyberbase and CyberCJK) is free for non-commercial use for qualified customers. Companies that wish to bundle Cyberbit with products, re-distribute Cyberbit, or use Cyberbit for any other commercial uses must contact Bitstream for licensing or permission.
Your comments about Cyberbit are important to us. Please e-mail comments to cyberbit@bitstream.com.
Bitstream is a registered trademark and Cyberbit, Cyberbase, CyberCJK and Dutch are trademarks of Bitstream Inc. TrueType is a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. Unicode is a registered trademark of the Unicode Consortium. HP and LaserJet are registered trademarks of Hewlett-Packard Corporation. Microsoft, Windows and Word are registered trademarks and Microsoft Internet Explorer is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Netscape Navigator and Communicator are trademarks of Netscape Communications Corporation.
All other product or company names are used for identification purposes only, and may be trademarks of their respective owners.
(c) 1998 Bitstream Inc. Cambridge Massachusetts, USA. All rights reserved.
March 1998