[MPEG-OTSPEC] Expressing a colourful glyph in a QR code and application of such a QR code

[William_J_G Overington]

Dear Vladimir

Thank you for your reply.

What I have in mind is standardizing the implementation of this idea of 
mine.

For example, suppose that in a future version of a fontmaking program, 
for example High-Logic FontCreator, an end user could have available a 
facility such that one would highlight a particular glyph in a font then 
use, from a menu, a facility

Export glyph information encoded in a QR code

the output being a QR code in a graphics file

and a facility

Export glyph information as a text string suitable for encoding in a QR 
code using "your" QR code generating facility

the output being a text string in a text file
Scanning a printed QR code containing such information with a smartphone 
(or other device) would allow a glyph encoded in accordance with the 
existing font standard to become generated either as a single glyph font 
or as adding a glyph into an existing font, as desired: thereby becoming 
available for use in the smartphone (or other device).


My thinking is that if the format of the encoding is just something that 
I have done myself, no matter how good a job I might make of designing 
it, then it would quite likely just be like a piece of pure mathematics 
that is never applied, yet if the encoding in an annex to the font 
standard, or something similar, then the idea could quite possibly be 
applied in various practical ways in the future.

Although such an encoding format is not in scope for the font standard 
itself, is there a way that it can be standardized such that it is more 
likely to become used in practice please, by manufacturers of fontmaking 
programs and by manufacturers of apps for smartphones and other devices?

The format needs to become standardized in an open source manner and 
have such ambience of provenance that it becomes used without concerns 
by various manufacturers.

I accept that such standardization will not be as part of the font 
standard, yet can it happen please? How could such standardization 
happen please?

Best regards,

William Overington

Monday 4 December 2023


------ Original Message ------
From: "Vladimir Levantovsky" <vladimir.levantovsky at gmail.com>
To: "William_J_G Overington" <wjgo_10009 at btinternet.com>
Cc: "MPEG OT Spec list" <mpeg-otspec at lists.aau.at>; 
fontdesigner at btinternet.com
Sent: Monday, 2023 Dec 4 At 17:08
Subject: Re: [MPEG-OTSPEC] Expressing a colourful glyph in a QR code and 
application of such a QR code

Dear William,

The general scope of a font standard is to define a universally encoded 
dataset that allows to transform a machine-readable sequence of 
codepoints (a text string) into a human-readable sequence of rendered 
glyphs. From what you're describing, it appears that the output of the 
process you suggest to standardize aims to convert a text string into 
another machine-readable code. So, the answer to at least one of the 
questions you asked - "is it in scope for such a standardization of the 
format of such a string of glyph-describing text characters to become 
encoded in the font standard" - would be _no_, it is out of scope of the 
font format standardization activities.


Thank you,
Vladimir




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