[MPEG-OTSPEC] near-term OT spec work

[Simon Cozens]

On 09/10/2020 02:37, Adam Twardoch (Lists) wrote:
> It was an amalgamation of pieces 
> written by various people over decades, partly at Microsoft, partly at 
> Adobe, with smaller contributions from other parties.

This is a very important point. MSOT and hence OFF is *not* a file 
format specification, nor is it intended to be. It's a combination of 
notes on a file format sprinkled with technical and implementation 
discussion, intended mainly for people who already know what it works.

Standardising the format was a great idea. Standardising the format 
*based on those notes* was an unfortunate expediency.

It needs a ground-up rewrite.

> And if the source documentation is available under a liberal license.? 
> Well, an older version already has been (AOTS which formed the basis of
> http://commontype.org/ <http://commontype.org/> )

Quick correctly: AOTS originally formed the basis of CommonType. Since 
then, all of the original AOTS text has been removed. CommonType is now 
a... oh, what's the phrase I'm looking for? "Ground-up rewrite".