[mpeg-OTspec] MS Proposal for a new Name Table ID

[Ken Lunde]

Behdad,

Also thinking out loud, and speaking from experience in this field, the practical application of your suggestion pertains to the kana glyphs that are typically present in Chinese and Korean fonts, because the national standards on which they're based include kana characters. In other words, your idea is useful when heuristics suggest that a Chinese or Korean font can render Japanese text, because they seem to have adequate coverage of Japanese due to their kana glyphs, but ultimately fail because the kana glyphs are poorly designed.

Regards...

-- Ken

On Jan 3, 2013, at 5:56 PM, Behdad Esfahbod <behdad at behdad.org> wrote:

> This kind of information is very useful. However, for the sake of better
> resolving languages NOT listed, I wonder whether a blacklist is also desired.
> To me it looks like the primary aim of this proposal is to say "this is NOT
> suitable for Japanese", not so much "this is suitable for Chinese". Just
> thinking aloud.
> 
> On 13-01-03 11:33 AM, Michelle Perham wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > As Vlad mentioned previously, the next MPEG meeting will be January 21-25 and
> > he would like to have proposed changes finalized by January 11 to meet the
> > deadline for document submission.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Microsoft has several small changes we’d like to propose. I’ll be sending them
> > out over the next 2 days. The first proposal is for an addition to the ‘name’
> > table. The proposal comes from Dwayne Robinson, who I’ve cc’d on this email.
> > Please include him on your responses.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Justification: OpenType fonts need a way to identify their intended language
> > usage so that scenarios like text editing can choose appropriate fonts which
> > switching language/IME. The inadequate legacy codepage bits have been long
> > exhausted, so I propose adding name table id 23 containing an IETF language
> > tag (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/name.htm).
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > The following description would be added to the documentation table.
> > 
> > “Intended Language. This is the language the font was really designed for,
> > which is not necessarily the same as character coverage. This allows
> > distinction, for example, amongst Asian fonts as being Traditional Chinese vs
> > Simplified Chinese vs Japanese, even though the fonts may have cmap coverage
> > for a subset of each. All language identifiers follow the IETF format with an
> > optional language and country and mandatory script subtag. These strings are
> > encoded in UTF-16BE using platform ID 0, encoding ID 3, and the respective
> > language id. Examples include “*-Jpan”, “zh-Hans”, “zh-Hant”. If the font
> > genuinely targets and fully supports more than one language, it will include
> > more than one name table entry separated by commas.”
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Sorry to not get this out sooner! Like everyone else we’ve been very busy.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Happy new year!
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Michelle
> > 
> > Microsoft Typography Group
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
> -- 
> behdad
> http://behdad.org/
>