[MPEG-OTSPEC] fonts and SC34 (was RE: To add some more perspective

[Peter Constable]

From: mpeg-otspec <mpeg-otspec-bounces at lists.aau.at> On Behalf Of MURATA Makoto
Sent: Sunday, September 27, 2020 2:26 PM

>I would say any organization other than JTC1/SC29
would work.  Most people in SC29 (MPEG and JPEG)
have no interest in fonts.

Murata-san: You’ve mentioned that “Fonts are in the scope of SC34<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fprotect-us.mimecast.com%2Fs%2FOZCyCER2v0u3NXYqiNOqwj&data=02%7C01%7C%7C3780a898d89f4953c4bb08d8457cf8f4%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637335750361087090&sdata=URiVhgyx7hxSkS2kRxjeMdaqdFbm0Y9dHIO8v9Uw1vw%3D&reserved=0>.” I’m aware that SC34 has a history with fonts with the ISO/IEC 9541 family of standards that goes back to 1991. The stated scope of 9541 is,

“ISO/IEC 9541<https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso-iec:9541:en> specifies the architecture of font resources, as well as the formats for font interchange among information processing systems.”

However, I’ve never, ever seen *anything* that references any of the 9541 standards—neither a product or another standard or specification.

Nor is there much available info, apart from purchasing the standards. There isn’t any Wikipedia article or any other web resource mentioning what the standards are or where they’re used apart from the ISO site. Even the preview is provided by ISO only for part 4.

ISO/IEC 9541-4:2009 discusses harmonization with OFF. In its intro, it says,

“ISO/IEC 9541<https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso-iec:9541:en> is a font information interchange standard and is designed to be independent of any concrete font file format. The Open Font Format (ISO/IEC 14496-22<https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso-iec:14496:-22:en>) is a font file format specification that is based on the TrueType font file format. With regard to the handling and utilization of the typographic properties stored in OFF file, ISO/IEC 14496-22<https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso-iec:14496:-22:en> describes the implementations on Microsoft Windows or IBM OS/2 only. Therefore, ISO/IEC 14496-22<https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso-iec:14496:-22:en> does not specify the method for defining a font resource in ISO/IEC 9541<https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso-iec:9541:en> architectures from a given OFF file, because it is out of the scope. ISO/IEC 9541-4<https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso-iec:9541:-4:en> fills the gap between OFF file and font resource in ISO/IEC 9541<https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso-iec:9541:en>.”

Even in 2009, I don’t think this was accurate since OFF was implemented in many more products than just Microsoft Windows and IBM OS/2.

I found a WG2 draft for 9541-3 Amd 2, but that just seemed to provide more information “for the harmonization of ISO/IEC 9541 to Open Font Format”. It talks about SGML (ISO 8879) as an interchange format, though that seems it would be a bit like saying that the interchange format for Open Office XML is, well, XML.

So, it’s all been a very big mystery to me. I’m sure there must be useful information that the 9541 standards provide that OFF does not provide and that they are, therefore, used _somewhere_, just not something I’m familiar with.

I wonder if you could shed additional light?


Thanks
Peter Constable
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