Re: [ft-devel] GX support now working

[Werner LEMBERG]

Hello Sascha!


> Looking at the PostScript output for Oslash, there seem to be plenty
> of artifacts in the glyph.  [...]  At least, TextEdit on MacOS X
> 10.10.3 shows the very same artifacts; see the attached screenshot.

Ouch.  This seems to imply that TextEdit isn't capable of handling
Apple's own GX fonts...

> Just wondering, what would you think about unit-testing FreeType's
> 'gvar' handling by emitting similar PostScript for some test font?

Good idea!  However, as mentioned in my other response, it would be
necessary to fix the TrueType->PS outline filling rules.  If you
provide something, I can add it to the FreeType demo programs rather
easily, I believe.

> I guess we'd have to build some custom font for stress-testing
> 'gvar', but this shouldn't be so hard.

Ha, *THIS* is something I want in FreeType: A tool to create test
fonts, even invalid ones, to systematically test FreeType's
capabilities, including error and recovery handling.

Ideally, there is a small file that contains a textual, human-readable
representation of a font, and a `compiler' that converts it to a
binary.  It must be on a far lower level than ttx, of course.  I
looked around in the internet, and the closest thing I've found is a
template for SweetScape's 010 editor, cf.

  http://www.sweetscape.com/010editor/templates/files/TTFTemplate.bt

I can imagine to have a similar template written in python, say.  The
test files would then selectively override the default structures with
the necessary (possibly invalid) data.

Does this sound sensible?  Would you like to work on such a tool?  I
guess that *all* font tool developers would crave for it :-)


    Werner