I’m a Unicode geek, but I feel like I don’t really know enough about what goes on in operating systems after the encoding and decoding issues are worked out. That is, when and where does all of that glyph selection and font shaping and other black magic actually happen? How much of it is dependent on the operating system? Applications? Fonts?

Head a splodes.

But whatever, live and learn. I did run across a very nicely done introduction to what appears to be the cutting edge in computer typography, OpenType:

Adam Twardoch’s PDF slides on OpenType: Typographic perfection with OpenType?

It gives a good idea of the sort of subtleties that OpenType can handle. And it’s very pretty. Font nerds, rejoice…