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

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Terence,

You keep repeating yourself. I know you designed rasterizers in the 1990s.
Thanks for sharing your view.

Saying "TrueType hinting is also under-specified" is called "whataboutism".
It shouldn't be used as a way to turn down a proposal.

The hinting *philosophy* being available is very different from hinting
algorithm being specified.

I  repeat: CFF/CFF2 hinting is unspecified and as demonstrated no
implementation other than Adobe's is deemed acceptable by Adobe itself.
This is very easy to understand: without specifying how to interpret hints,
it's impossibly unlikely to come up with multiple "satisfactory" hinted
rasterizers.


behdad
http://behdad.org/


On Thu, Oct 8, 2020 at 1:24 AM Terence Dowling <terry at tdowling.com> wrote:

> 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> 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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>
>
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