Partial Decomposition
Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2017 6:59 pm
Some while ago there was a problem with the hinter not hinting if the font contained composite glyphs with more than three levels of indirection.
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6105&p=27675#p27675
Since then I have kept the level of indirection down to three or below, but it is easy to exceed this limit without it being immediately obvious. Take Greek Extended for example. Some of the combining characters used for the accents are made up of the accents for the greek alphabet which in turn are usually a composite of the latin accents.
It would be nice if there were a command in the transform wizard to partially decompose a glyph. There is already one for decompose which converts the glyph into a simple glyph.
Partial decomposition would replace the glyphs within a composite glyph with their component glyphs but still as a composite. Say I had a glyph composed of a dot which was the 'period centred' glyph which was itself a composite of the 'period' glyph (but moved) and 'period' was a simple glyph. Then partial decomposition would replace my glyph with 'period' but as a composite in the place it was before the partial decomposition.
Of course it would have no effect on simple glyphs or on composite glyphs composed entirely of simple glyphs. But if it was a composite whose components were composites themselves then it would replace them with their source components recursively until the glyph was a composite of simples.
I hope I have explained this well enough for people to understand.
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6105&p=27675#p27675
Since then I have kept the level of indirection down to three or below, but it is easy to exceed this limit without it being immediately obvious. Take Greek Extended for example. Some of the combining characters used for the accents are made up of the accents for the greek alphabet which in turn are usually a composite of the latin accents.
It would be nice if there were a command in the transform wizard to partially decompose a glyph. There is already one for decompose which converts the glyph into a simple glyph.
Partial decomposition would replace the glyphs within a composite glyph with their component glyphs but still as a composite. Say I had a glyph composed of a dot which was the 'period centred' glyph which was itself a composite of the 'period' glyph (but moved) and 'period' was a simple glyph. Then partial decomposition would replace my glyph with 'period' but as a composite in the place it was before the partial decomposition.
Of course it would have no effect on simple glyphs or on composite glyphs composed entirely of simple glyphs. But if it was a composite whose components were composites themselves then it would replace them with their source components recursively until the glyph was a composite of simples.
I hope I have explained this well enough for people to understand.