Editorial comments on the proposed specification text

[Levantovsky, Vladimir]

Dear all,

I've spent some time working with the latest version of the proposed
text (m11183, with the latest changes by Mike Ksar), and would like to
suggest the following editorial changes for consideration of the group:

1. In my opinion, the document can be "flatten" by renumbering the
clauses and subclauses to remove one extra layer of subclauses - this
will improve readability.

2. The original OpenType specification has parts of the text that define
advanced tables, yet the general description of the advanced table
structure (which is shared among all advanced tables) is provided as an
Appendix to the spec. I think it will be useful to move it to the main
part of the specification and place it in the text before the definition
of specific tables - again, for improved readability and comprehension
of the spec.

3. The part of the document (pages 306-321) present WGL4.0 (Windows
Glyph List ver. 4.0) character set. I am not sure if it really belongs
to font format specification. This is Windows-specific, and can always
be found on Microsoft web site. In addition, this list would be a
duplication of Unicode values already provided by the Unicode standard.
I would remove this part to avoid any possible duplication and/or
confusion.

4. CFF and VORG tables - the text with the description of these tables
is referenced in the OpenType specification as Adobe Technical Notes
(and is included by web links). Since the original OpenType spec. is
normatively referenced from both Adobe and Microsoft websites, it did
not present any problems. In order to finish the integrated ISO document
we need the text of these notes be provided as an input contribution
from Adobe. The other option would be keeping these parts as the
normative reference (e.g. to MPEG4, part 18).

5. TrueType Fundamentals (pages 322 - 465) - this appendix provides the
information on the original TrueType. As the part of the original
OpenType specification, it has been normatively referenced by part 18.
Do we really need to duplicate it here? This is provided on Microsoft
website for historical reference purposes. I doubt that anybody other
then type designers would need this info, and font designers already
have it (or know where to find it). We can either include it in the text
(which is quite lengthy), or keep it as a normative reference and
significantly reduce the size of the document.

6. Starting on page 475 - OpenType specification change log. Should we
keep it in the ISO text. I understand that OT version 1.4 has gone
through some important changes but we (ISO) have decided to take version
1.4 as the starting point. It may be confusing to keep the changes log
in the ISO document that has just been created.

7. General comment - the original text has many references to something
that is Windows-specific. We may need to carefully examine them and
either remove or substitute (if necessary) with generic examples.


Best regards,
Vlad

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.aau.at/pipermail/mpeg-otspec/attachments/20050613/723b336a/attachment.html>