[MPEG-OTSPEC] Registries and frameworks [Was: Issues from CSS: Will they be covered by the text shaping WG?]

[Simon Cozens]

On 14/08/2020 19:47, John Hudson wrote:
> Eliyezer’s concept was that private or custom tags wouldn't be supported 
> anywhere, and that if people wanted new tags they would have to register 
> them with Microsoft. I'm not sure that even made sense in the mid-1990s. 
> So again this comes down to a question of ownership (in both the legal 
> sense and the sense of responsibility, which may be at odds, e.g. 
> Microsoft claiming ownership of OpenType while being derelict in their 
> responsibility for the spec).

This is why yesterday I raised a bug concerning this sentence:

"The OpenType Layout feature model provides great flexibility to font 
developers because features do not have to be predefined by Microsoft 
Corporation."

While technically that's true, practically it isn't (font designers 
making up their own ad hoc features are unlikely to find implementor 
support), and philosophically it suggests a level of community 
involvement and development that is... not concordant with the rest of 
the MSOT process.