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

[Terence Dowling]

On 10/7/2020 14:50, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 3:35 PM Levantovsky, Vladimir
> <Vladimir.Levantovsky at monotype.com
> <mailto: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.
>
This frequently repeated argument for the removal of CFF/CFF2 is lack of
specification for how hints are used.

I'm confused by this because it seems quite clear that rasterization
issues are not part of the MPEG-OTSPEC area of responsibility.


The same suggestion  could be made to remove TrueType instructions
because they are completely ignored or interpreted in unspecified ways
by major implementations.

I'm a retired rasterizer implementer with production code experience for
both TrueType and CFF.  A skill clearly underrepresented in these
discussions.

Terence Dowling


P.S. It is worth noting that the hinting structure and general
information philosophy was publicly documented in 1990

see: https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/devnet/font/pdfs/T1_SPEC.pdf

It has been public for about 30 years.

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