[Devel] Re: BDF-Erweiterung

[Werner LEMBERG]

[about a BDF extension for storing graymaps with bpp > 1

> I've tracked down Terry O'Donnell as the keep of the BDF format spec
> here at Adobe, but from what I hear it really is not high on the
> list to do anything with it.
> 
> If you can come up with a strong reason why Adobe absolutely has to
> update the spec please make your pitch to Terry, but to be honest I
> don't see a big chance for that. It will involve more than "just
> updating the spec". To allocate resources to look into this issue
> must be justified by the return on investment for Adobe.

OK, here a translation of the original German message I sent to
Torsten.

Years ago, Microsoft extended the BDF format slightly to support
graymaps with with bpp > 1 (as used in TTFs).  This extension is a
fourth argument to `SIZE', specifying the pixel depth.  Example for a
8bpp graymap:

  SIZE 20 75 75 8

Valid arguments would be 1, 2, 4, and 8; no fourth argument means bpp
equal to 1.

The nibbles in the BITMAP are interpreted according to that value.

Besides those MS tools for TTFs some other programs do support BDF
graymaps: Mark Leisher's bitmap editor xmbdfed, George William's font
editor pfaedit, and our FreeType library.

The idea of asking Adobe to mention this extension in the BDF specs is
`to prevent a proliferation of different ways of specifying greymaps
by BDF files' (G. Williams).

I think that Adobe shouldn't act here as a company interested in money
but the maintainer of the BDF specification.  In case Adobe is no
longer interested in maintaining the specs I'm volunteering to do
that.


    Werner