Re: [Freebangfont-devel] plan to create an unified layout table

[Taneem Ahmed]

On 31 Jan 2003, Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:

> ...hehe - M$ Office 97 in Win XP supports Bangla with our fonts ;-)

That's great news... but I don't use M$ :P

> We need to get some good looking glyphs....

Actually I would like to skip on *good looking glyphs* for now. The reason
I am intrested to create this flow is so that people can start creating
fonts with good looking glyphs and not worry about the layout table. I am
sure there are enough people out there who can create fancy glyphs, but
IMHO the major reason we don't see many OpenType fonts is because most of
the people are not clear about the whole layout table issue.

> Yep - I usually follow k kh g gh... for the consonants and kk , kt, etc
> for the conjuncts

well, would you mind creating a list only for the vowels and consonants?
And for conjuncts I would recommend using a '_' in between, other wise it
may become difficult to understand. For example, if we say n = donton no
and nn = murdhano no, then what will 'nnn' mean? 'n_nn' or 'nn_n' will
make it clear.

> Yep - but do they handle positioning??
> Positioning has to be there for hrasha-u and related things.
> Otherwise, you need newer glyphs

In the OpenType font, all the tables (GSUB, GPOS, etc.) are stored
separately with glyph indices. So as long as the new font has the same
number of glyphs in the same order as the master, all we need to do is:

- dump out all the GPOS, GSUB, and other tables from the master font, and
- merge them into the new font.

This will take care of everything. Matter of fact, if the creater of the
new font does not want to put all the glyphs, s/he can just leave them
blank (but set the name).

Does this make sense?

Taneem

If it is true that the only paradises are those we have lost, I know what
name to give the tender and inhuman something that dwells in me today.