Unlawful Unmapped Characters

[Dick Pape]

How is it acceptable to allow unmapped glyphs in industry-standard open type fonts which are only used/usable by Adobe proprietary software A single vendor has set defacto standards which preclude other applications/companies from being able to use such fonts

Unmapped Glyphs.jpg (108.34 KiB) Viewed 5263 times

(The red squares on half the page are unmapped items which are not shown in any but Adobe software.)

Each upper case letter has 3 alternate letter forms and the lower case may have as many as 7! Where are these defined in the industry standards

Sounds like anti-trust action is needed! Certain font software vendors should take the lead in correcting this abuse

I'm sure there would be broad industry support including Microsoft which would both encourage and support pursuing the goal of leveling the font software playing field...

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

OpenType features are an open standard available to any software vendor. If they want to implement support for them, they can. Then I am sure that the Adobe fonts will work as they do in Adobe software.

Palatino Linotype also contains numerous unmapped glyphs that only work in software that supports OpenType features.

[vanisaac]

How is it acceptable to allow unmapped glyphs in industry-standard open type fonts which are only used/usable by Adobe proprietary software?

"Used" and "Usable" are two very divergent concepts. Furthermore, proprietary features are not illegal, unless they are a means of using ubiquity to exclude competetors from a market, in which case, they run afoul of anti-trust laws. But, as Bikhu suggested, these alternate glyphs are almost certainly OpenType accessible, which means that software that supports the designated OpenType feature will be able to fully access these alternates.

[Dave Crosby]

If they are only usable by Adobe software, then Adobe has taken a gamble that may or may not pay off.

It is like an arms race. Many decades ago a man invented a pistol that would fire a rocket propelled bullet.
It was fantastic! You could jamb the pistol into mud and it would still safely fire.
Because the propellant was in the bullet and not the casing, the projectile continued to accelerate until it reached the target.
It had a flat trajectory, making aiming much easier.

Unfortunately the inventor didn't have the military friends his competitors did and it was rejected. Just another interesting idea on the scrap heap of history.