nouvelle liste sur fontes

[Jacques Andre <Jacques.Andre@xxxxxxxx>]

Peter Lofting (l'un des auteurs d'Atsui) m'envoie ceci en demandant de
le
diffuser :

Here is a new font-programming-oriented list that some of you may be
interested in subscribing to, particularly in the light of the interest
over the idea of a font technology 'Jamboree'.

Having text sources is a way to break the UI tool dependency bottleneck
and
enjoy a lot of benefits of classical source code maintenance such as
version tracking, commenting, file comparisons, etc. It also enables a
whole raft of database utilities to be made by third parties which can
compliment UI tools on an equally integrated footing.

Below is the intro blurb for the list. All comments and feedback are
welcome - in fact, just post them to the font-sources-list!

To subscribe send mail as follows:

address--    To: majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
subject--    Subject: anything you like...FYI only
message--    subscribe font-sources-list

Best wishes

  Peter Lofting




Welcome to font-sources-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
-----------------------------------------

Why this list?

font-sources-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx is a list for the discussion of
text-based
sources for fonts. It is intended as an open forum to arrive at as wide
as
possible a consensus over various text representations of font tables
and
data.


Who started it?


It has been started by the fonts engineering group at Apple in order to
involve developers and engineers elsewhere in making something useful.
It
is the follow-up to initial discussions held at ATypeI in Lyon in
October
1998.

The reason is that if designed well, these text formats will be an
efficient super-set that meet everyone's needs and can therefore be used
as
export and interchange formats between various font tools, enabling font
designers to manage their projects better.

The existence of good stable text representations of font tables will
also
encourage the creation of new additional specialist tools. Examples of
existing text file formats are Adobe AFM and BDF files.


What are you going to talk about?

All file formats are up for discussion. Particularly the text
representations of all TrueType sub-tables which include AAT and
OpenType
tables. Any kind of tables to do with Metrics, glyph identifiers and
glyph
attributes.

Information not in fonts that represent higher-level relationships
between
glyphs and fonts for design purposes, such as change histories and ways
to
describe the spatial dependencies and interrelationships between glyphs.


Present Mk#1 examples of editable and compilable font text sources that
we
have developed FOND and MIF files (see DumpFOND and AATFontTool at
http://fonts.apple.com),


Another area of discussion is structured conventions and guidelines for
glyph-naming and the ability to label glyphs with multiple names, notes
and
version information during the design process. Such information can most
easily be added to a tool with text files. The same applies to the
ability
to work with multiple mapping tables for the same collection of glyphs.

We hope that discussion will cover preferred groupings of information
for
various purposes, parsing and generation considerations for different
applications and interrelationships of data files.


Who should subscribe?

The people who would be interested in this list are tool and font
developers: those who have to manage large glyph collections, complex
font
design projects or multiple format revisions and version control issues.
Anyone who has tried to make a database to augment a font tool or
process
will have something to contribute from their experience and something to
gain from the exchange.


What if it goes quiet?

The list may have patchy traffic. This isn't the hottest topic in town
for
most people, but it is beneficial to everyone - so stay tuned. The
residual level of traffic will be postings from time-to-time of text
format proposals and tool release announcements.


Administrivia

The list is an open subscribe/unsubscribe server responding to all the
normal majordomo commands. Place commands in the body of the message.
Commands in the "Subject:" line are NOT processed. ie:

address--    To: majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
subject--    Subject: the server doesn't read this ...FYI only
message--    subscribe ListName

If you have any questions or problems, please contact the owner of the
list, Peter Lofting <lofting@xxxxxxxxx>

------------------oOo---------------------






-- 
Jacques André
Irisa/Inria-Rennes,   Campus de Beaulieu,  F-35042 Rennes Cedex,  
France
Tél. : +33 2 99 84 73 50,  fax : +33 2 99 84 71 71, email :
jandre@xxxxxxxx