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

[Deepayan Sarkar]

On Friday 31 January 2003 05:08 am, Taneem Ahmed wrote:
> Hey guys,
>
> I remember someone here mentioned about having an unified OpenType
> layout table for Bangla fonts, and I think it is about time. MS has

I agree. But as Sayamindu has pointed out, GPOS might be a problem. For one 
thing, the same GPOS table would definitely not work for all fonts. And 
something like VOLT will probably be needed.

> published a detailed document about creating Bangla fonts, and I think we
> should come up with a *full* font. Having said that, I do know how much
> work is involved to create a OpenType font, and I really appreciate
> all the works done here.
>
> Now here is a plan to make it easier to create new Bangla OpenType fonts.
>
> 1. Create one complete *master* Bangla OpenType font. This means all the
> developers put together their experience and understanding to create the
> layout table.
>
> 2. Give each glyph in this font an unique name (this is important)
>
> 3. Create program(s) such that if one wants to create a new Bangla
> OpenType font, then:
>    * s/he creates a TrueType font which has the same number of glyphs
>      (and same names) as the master font, and
>    * use the program to merge the layout table info to this font.
>
>  One great thing about this process would be that people won't be stuck
> with windows to create OpenTYpe fonts.
>
>  BTW, I have already played with number 3. There are already existing
> programs (GPLed) that dumps out OpenType fonts into xml format, and
> reconstruct the font back based on this (or edited) xml file. I don't
> think it will be difficult to modify this program. I volunteer for this
> part.

You mean fonttools/ttx ? Last time I checked, it couldn't reconstruct likhan 
after deconstructing it (but I'll check again. I also didn't try the other 
fonts). On the other hand, VOLT can usually store this information in a 
separate file, and although I'm not a 100% sure, I think that would serve the 
same purpose.

> Let me know what you guys think.

A possible approach might be the following: 

Keep VOLT data with only the GSUB info. For any new font, add this (this 
should give reasonable results -- likhan, for instance, doesn't use any 
GPOS). For GPOS, play with VOLT a bit more (this would have to be on a per 
font basis).

Deepayan