OpenType 1.5 draft & 1.6 suggestions

Discussions about the development of TrueType and OpenType fonts.
Post Reply
William
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 2038
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:41 pm
Location: Worcestershire, England
Contact:

OpenType 1.5 draft & 1.6 suggestions

Post by William »

The following post in an Adobe blog may be of interest to some readers of this forum.

http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/200 ... draft.html

William Overington

30 January 2008
Erwin Denissen
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 11107
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2002 12:41 am
Location: Bilthoven, The Netherlands
Contact:

Post by Erwin Denissen »

It was about time, after five years of silence ;-)

The good and bad news is I'm forced to update FontCreator to reflect the upcoming version of the OpenType specification.

Since FontCreator doesn't fully support the whole OpenType specification, decisions about what to include are also made based on the current feature set available in FontCreator.

I think people who use FontCreator to design their fonts are more interested in basic OpenType layout features, like glyph substitution, and ligatures.

One important change is related to identifying a font. There is a new font selection flag introduced in the OS/2 table. This flag is named WWS that stands for Weight, Width (“Stretch”), and Slope (“Style”): regular, italic, or oblique. FWIW, this new flag is already supported in Windows Presentation Foundation 1.0, that ships with Windows Vista, and is also available for Windows XP (with at least Service Pack 2 installed).
Erwin Denissen
High-Logic
Proven Font Technology
Erwin Denissen
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 11107
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2002 12:41 am
Location: Bilthoven, The Netherlands
Contact:

Post by Erwin Denissen »

Old news, but in case you missed it, OpenType specification version 1.5 has been released May 2008.

It seems Microsoft's Typography group released it in silence, as their Typography news section doesn't mention the release. Thomas "my other car is a sans serif" Phinney did mention the OpenType 1.5 draft in January, but no updates there either.
Erwin Denissen
High-Logic
Proven Font Technology
Dick Pape
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 1360
Joined: Wed Oct 01, 2003 1:19 pm
Location: North Dallas, Texas

Too Much

Post by Dick Pape »

You should make reading these specs a requirement for buying Font Creator! That would multiply our appreciation of the simplicity of FC...
Erwin Denissen
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 11107
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2002 12:41 am
Location: Bilthoven, The Netherlands
Contact:

Post by Erwin Denissen »

Thanks Dick, but I'm afraid I would be out of business real soon ;-)
Erwin Denissen
High-Logic
Proven Font Technology
Post Reply