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List:       xfree-fonts
Subject:    Re: [Fonts]What format should contributed fonts use? (was: Re: Help with fixed fonts)
From:       Juliusz Chroboczek <jec () dcs ! ed ! ac ! uk>
Date:       2001-12-11 14:08:20
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OT> having a commonly agreed upon glyph set is [a pain]

[problem description]

OT> a way of representing the character to glyph mapping in a flexible
OT> way starts seeming pretty attractive.

Owen, we fully agree.  I just thought your formulation was overly
categorical -- there are many situations in which PFA/AFM is good
enough, and it has the advantage of being a simple, well-understood,
well-implemented, proven technology.

(Just to pick nits: AFM does include information about composite
positionment (CC), kerning pair (K) and ligatures.  It's not
sufficient for, say, Arabic, though.)
 
>> I would tend to agree with you in the particular case of
>> general-purpose fonts, although I still dislike the complexity and
>> lack of structure of OpenType -- perhaps merely a sign of my lack of
>> understanding, though.

OT> It's complex certainly. It seems to work OK for a pretty big range
OT> of problems, however. I'm not sure what you mean by a lack of structure ...
OT> isn't all complexity in the structure? It is annoying that for
OT> most of the features there are many ways to encode the same thing ...

Exactly.  It looks to me as completely devoid of a guiding idea --
let's pile in a bunch of features.  It feels like a committee
compromise, but one that (unlike good committee compromises) is not
based on current practice, but rather on half a dozen people
suggesting ``it would be nice if'' features, and without a person
responsible for ensuring internal consistency.

OT> presumably in an attempt to provi[d]e space efficient encodings.

I think you're being overly generous here.  Presumably in an attempt
to make everyone and his brother reasonably happy.

I have no doubt, though, that the industry will work out a subset of
OpenType that is actually both manageable and expressive enough.
Hopefully, this subset will be sufficiently standard for the remaining
features to fall into disuse (just like the ``post'' name table or
MacBits information in TTF).

OT> But support all these formats is really code that only has to be
OT> written once.

And workarounds for common bugs added whenever a new foundry gets into
the OpenType business... but let's not get carried away.

                                        Juliusz
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