[MPEG-OTSPEC] New AHG mandates and other news!

[Peter Constable]

William,

You've described a way to organize data, but to get the functionality you described the data would be organized differently: a table that maps glyph ID sequences to string entries in the 'name' table.

But the scenario you have in mind is to use fonts as a way to carry descriptions of Unicode character sequences, and specifically QID emoji sequences-which is an idea that has been proposed but has not been approved by Unicode. Even _if_ the QID emoji proposal were adopted by Unicode-and it's far from clear that it will be-, I don't think it's a good idea to use fonts as a vehicle for transporting descriptions of glyph ID sequences.


  *   For the QID emoji sequence scenario, Unicode strings in general are sent between applications or between devices 99.99% of the time without any font data. So, it's very unclear that it would provide much useful benefit for that scenario.
  *   If it is assumed that text containing QID emoji sequences would _need_ font data to be sent along with the text, then that raises a question of whether the QID proposal provides significant benefit over using PUA characters.
  *   The formats added to the font would not be inherently specific to QID sequences-that is, the design suggests a much more general usage: strings describing arbitrary glyph sequences. But I don't see any real need for such a general mechanism.

It seems to me like you're trying to propose enhancements the font format to address challenges for the QID emoji proposal. For my part, I don't think it's a good idea. Fonts are not the best way to solve those problems. If Unicode is going to consider the QID proposal, then proponents of the proposal need to come up with better ways to address any shortcomings in the proposal.


Peter

From: mpeg-otspec <mpeg-otspec-bounces at lists.aau.at> On Behalf Of William_J_G Overington
Sent: May 6, 2021 8:34 AM
To: 'MPEG OT Spec list' <mpeg-otspec at lists.aau.at>; Vladimir Levantovsky <vladimir.levantovsky at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [MPEG-OTSPEC] New AHG mandates and other news!

> As part of the mandate #2, we are also encouraged to start exploration activities to discuss the next round of changes that will become the basis for the new OFF 5th edition work item - your contributions to these topics (both on this list and / or new issues on MPEGGroup/OpenFontFormat GitHub<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2FMPEGGroup%2FOpenFontFormat&data=04%7C01%7C%7C7e6370fe735f49ebb32408d910a4578a%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637559120296755956%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=igXd5Lph96xICJc8mh2u4eFDZnUvgtZ2ok%2Ft9ebxgdw%3D&reserved=0>) are much appreciated.



Would it be good to have a new table which is similar in structure to a GSUB table but which can have in the part to the left of each -> either one postscript name or a sequence of postscript names and to the right of each -> a string of Unicode text characters in UTF-16 format - that is, a string of text characters as one might have in, say, a computer program written in Pascal, for the avoidance of doubt specifically not a sequence of postscript names.



I am thinking that this could have various uses, for example, for text to speech in a language of the font designer's choice, transliteration, on-screen explanation of emoji - including perhaps the potentially millions of QID emoji that may soon become encoded into Unicode, so that a font that supports just a few QID emoji could also include an explanation of them in a language of the font designer's choice. The output of the table could be used for any of screen display, tooltip display, speech output. The use of the table in a font would be optional and could be simply ignored by an application that does not support it: also an application that does support the use of the information that is in the table could have a button to switch that use on or off.



William Overington



Thursday 6 May 2021


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