🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi Marilyn 

I certainly wouldn't extrapolate from Luc Devroye's comments about how complicated OpenType fonts are to saying that he's arguing for the ability to rip off other's fonts or unfairly modify them. I read it simply as an objection to the over-complication of font production which will result in the loss of advantages that we currently enjoy with PostScript and TrueType fonts. To take a simple recent example - someone on this forum was interested in acccessing the minus sign in their font. This can be done easily enough now, using the free PS font utility Noah, and moving a minus sign to an acessible slot in one's font would, I believe, fall under "fair use". Quick, simple. But, I am unaware of any similar free native OT font utility that would allow one to add a composite character not inlcuded in the font. 

As for Unicode, TrueType can also support Unicode, so OT fonts are not actually revolutionary in that regard. And I'm not sure which part you say slights the benefits for other languages, but I certainly didn't read it any of it as downplaying the importance of having multilingual support. 

In Adobe's promotional material for OT, one of the main advantages stressed (and often the first thing stressed) is that OT fonts offer cross-platform compatibility. Given this, I think Prof Devroye raises some interesting points about the ease of converting fonts at present. 

I'm not saying that I necessarily agree with Prof Devroye's rant. I'm taking a "wait and see" approach to the development of OT supporting software and as to whether foundries add new glyphs to their fonts or just combine existing expert, small caps, and regular fonts into OT fonts. At present, OT fonts don't add signifcant advantages for me to bother with them (and I do need accented vowels not covered by the standard ISO set). If I used ID for work, I might re-evaluate that position, but I won't be using ID until (or if) it adds long-document support. 

Cheers, Dominic