Re: [Aleph] OpenType-to-TeX and other musings...

["Idris Samawi Hamid" <ishamid@colostate.edu>]

Thank you Taco and Gábor for your valuable comments-)

Based on both of your comments, it seems that the most practical approach  
in the short run is for Aleph (whose raison d`etre is more focused on the  
short run->) is to just treat otf's like cid/enriched type1 fonts (a la  
Latin Modern), which is what ConTeXt (and I guess LaTeX too) are already  
doing (with smart encodings, etc.) The main thing that aleph offers on  
this front is >256-glyph encodings. Simple otp's could provide switches to  
turn on needed features (small caps, superiors, swashes, etc) in a large  
font without clogging the system with multiple encodings (Occam's razor);  
only a single encoding vector for the entire raw font would be needed. I  
know that loading encodings in ConTeXt would certainly be a lot simpler-)

On Sat, 17 Dec 2005 06:13:21 -0700, <gabor.bella@enst-bretagne.fr> wrote:

> 3) OpenType fonts, as Taco has already mentioned, have a declarative
> nature: they tell you what to do but not how to do it.

In the short run, for Aleph's purposes, these declarations and  
much/most/all of the metainfo can be treated as "suggestions" for the otp  
designer to consider in implementing things. There is no need to treat  
them as something "holy".

Based on your comments and my other research, I will focus on enriched/CID  
type1 (which I guess is equivalent to cff-flavored opentype) font solution  
in my own work, and not worry about otf declarations for now.

In the long run, of course, it would be great if a rewrite of Omega could  
execute a complete implementation of otf functionality. I wish dear Yannis  
and Gábor the very best in this regard!

Best to all
Idris
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