[MPEG-OTSPEC] Removal of the CFF and CF2 from OFF standard (was: Proposal to make OFF complete)

[Dave Crossland]

On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 6:45 PM Behdad Esfahbod <behdad at behdad.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 4:37 PM Dave Crossland <dcrossland at google.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 5:51 PM Behdad Esfahbod <behdad at behdad.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 3:35 PM Levantovsky, Vladimir <
>>> Vladimir.Levantovsky at monotype.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Wednesday, August 19, 2020 12:40 AM Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Moreover, I suggest CFF and CFF2 be removed from OFF. The
>>>> claim-to-superiority of CFF format is: 1. better hinting, and 2. better
>>>> compression. Re better-hinting, the interpretation of CFF hints is NOT
>>>> specified anywhere. Adobe's code in FreeType is what we have. Re better
>>>> compression, the existence of CFF in OpenType / OFF is partly why adding
>>>> quadratic beziers to glyf table has continually not happened.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> In reality, CFF only serves Adobe, who sells their rasterizer to MS /
>>>> Apple platforms and serves only Adobe. Another example of Adobe abusing the
>>>> "open" ideology / terminology is the Noto CJK / Adobe-equivalent. It's NOT
>>>> open-source by any means. The sources are not available. That's something
>>>> that I pointed out directly to Ken Lunde at one of his Unicode Conference
>>>> presentations. Adobe is clearly aware of it. And I couldn't fix when I was
>>>> at Google.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Rip the bandaid. Make open standards truly open.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> With my SC29/WG3 member representative hat on (and _*not*_ serving in
>>>> my capacity as a chair of this AHG) I object to this proposal. With many
>>>> thousands of fonts currently deployed, and at least two (or more) different
>>>> implementations available – this proposal, if considered, would do more
>>>> harm than good.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Okay let me narrow down the proposal to removing CFF2 only.
>>>
>>
>> I object to the proposal to remove CFF2, because while few CFF2 VF fonts
>> are available, CFF2 is now widely implemented by font engines
>>
>
> It's in OpenType. I don't see why it needs to be in OFF from a
> forward-looking point of view.
>

CFF2 needs to be in OFF because then it is definitively clear of
rightholder friction, allowing it to be widely adopted.

The many users of harfbuzz, that you tout, are doing so because OFF has
cleared a path for that adoption.
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