[mpeg-OTspec] Draft amendment of ISO/IEC 14496-22 OFF (3rd edition)

[John Hudson]

Vlad wrote:

 > I agree and share your point of view but I also understand Behdad’s
> position and his desire to enable font tools make intelligent decisions
> that are not in any way limited by today’s prescriptions that might get
> outdated at some point in the near (or distant) future.

> So considering both of these views – I’d propose that we should
> specifically mention the unique role that ‘name’ table plays in a font
> collection (serving as a unique identifier attached to a font component)
> and also explicitly mention that any other tables can be shared and the
> decision to do so is based solely on the design decisions applied to
> font components and font collections that include them.

This sounds reasonable, but I would like to see such comments reference 
'current font collection implementations' or perhaps a specific version 
of the format spec. When considering possible models for packaging 
size-specific design variants a couple of years ago, one option I 
examined would have involved a new kind of TTC in which the unique 
identifier would have been a size reference rather than a name 
reference. This wasn't pursued, but I offer it as evidence that there 
are other ways of thinking about font collections, and hence possible 
future innovations in this area.

JH



-- 

John Hudson
Tiro Typeworks Ltd    www.tiro.com
Salish Sea, BC        tiro at tiro.com

Getting Spiekermann to not like Helvetica is like training
a cat to stay out of water. But I'm impressed that people
know who to ask when they want to ask someone to not like
Helvetica. That's progress. -- David Berlow