name ID proposed changes

[Hadley, Joshua]

Sairus Patel wrote:

> The specs for name IDs 6 and 20 (which were proposed at the same time) certainly look out of place when compared with the specs for the other name IDs: they are lengthy and full of various implementation details and directives. Thanks, Josh, for taking the initiative to clean this up (that mythical redo of the 'name' table may never happen, but we can chip away at it bit by bit).

That’s exactly why I only proposed changes to name ID 6 for now — while a major overhaul like we talked about would be beneficial to pretty much everyone, it doesn’t seem like there’s enough interest or energy to get it done. So it looks like chipping away is the best way forward for now. I plan to submit other changes for later cycles. I put more urgency on this specific issue because the language (“shall”) makes it normative, yet we know from experience that the requirement is not enforced anywhere (that is to say: there are lots of fonts shipping from various suppliers where there is only a single entry for name ID 6, and those fonts do not fail as a result of that condition, at least not on relatively modern implementations).

Sorry I was late in the cycle (I didn’t even realize how late it was until I checked in with Vlad), but we have had the issue come up repeatedly as a question of validity (conformance). I kind of got fed up with that, so I took the opportunity to try to get it corrected at the specification level and, I hope, put an end to that annoyance.


> I've chatted with a couple of folks here at Adobe, and we're OK with what Josh proposes for name ID 6, so long as we do the same for name ID 20 (the specs for name IDs 6 and 20 refer to each other). So the normative part of name ID 20 would be:
> 
> <<<
> Name ID 20: PostScript CID findfont name; Its presence in a font means that the nameID 6 holds a PostScript font name that is meant to be used with the "composefont" invocation in order to invoke the font in a PostScript interpreter. See the definition of name ID 6.
> 
> The value held in the name ID 20 string is interpreted as a PostScript font name that is meant to be used with the "findfont" invocation, in order to invoke the font in a PostScript interpreter.
> 
> When translated to ASCII, this name string must be restricted to the printable ASCII subset, codes 33 through 126, except for the 10 characters: '[', ']', '(', ')', '{', '}', '<', '>', '/', '%'. See 'name' table section of clause 7 "Recommendations for OFF fonts" for additional information.
> >>>
> 
> The Recommendations section would include a "name ID 20" subsection that would contain the entire text of the currently published name ID 20 definition.

This sounds fine to me.



Thanks,

Josh