[OpenType] TrueType-flavored ".otf"

[John Hudson]

On 15/01/13 7:31 AM, Ken Lunde wrote:

> While we're on the subject of "Recommendations for OpenType Fonts," some of my recent work with TrueType has demonstrated that virtually all modern TrueType-capable environments no longer depend on or adhere to the "First Four Glyphs in Fonts" portion, specifically that GIDs 1 through 3 can be arbitrary glyphs. Only GID+0 (.notdef) must be present and must also function as the ".notdef" glyph. This reality brings TrueType in better line with PostScript-based fonts in which only GID+0 must be present and function as the ".notdef" glyph.

There remain workflow issues in this regard, and I've found it easier to 
bring PS fonts in line with the old TTF requirement than the other way 
round. The only time a client for CFF fonts has actually requested that 
we not apply the first-four-glyphs rule was when we made fonts for 
Adobe, which required us to manually rewrite the first part of the cmap 
tables (using TTX at that time) after generating fonts from VOLT. While 
the first-four-glyphs rule might no longer be a requirement for any 
consuming software, does it do any harm at all?

JH


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