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

[John Hudson]

On 04/01/13 8:51 PM, Ken Lunde wrote:

> I think that the original intent of this proposal is not about specifying which languages are supported by a font resource, but rather what the intended language (or languages) of the font is.

That is my understanding of the proposal, too. I see this data being 
most useful in fonts that include character subsets for purely technical 
reasons. For instance, all Microsoft's Indic fonts now contain Latin-1 
8-bit codepage coverage, presumably because failure to include at least 
one 8-bit codepage produced problems in some software (what? where?). 
Being able to flag these fonts for newer software as not being intended 
for European languages seems worthwhile.

There is set of fonts that constitute a peculiar grey area in this 
regard. For instance, the Microsoft Nyala and Arabic Typesetting fonts 
are intended primarily for Ethiopic and Arabic script use, but both have 
custom designed Latin subsets which I've seen used effectively on their 
own (I've even seen a book typeset in the Arabic Typesetting Latin). 
With this in mind, I think the subjective criteria that Ken suggests -- 
determining whether the secondary subsets are a 'poor choice' for those 
scripts -- makes sense in deciding when and when not to include the 
proposed information in fonts.


JH



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