[OpenFontLibrary] workflow hints

[Peter Baker]

On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 9:40 AM, Ben Laenen <benlaenen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dave Crossland wrote:
>> Like the XGF format?
>
> Don't know. But we need to have some distinction here between
>
> * how you edit the instructions in a program
> * how it's saved in the file
>
> Is the xgridfit format good to write down instructions: I'm not a fan of it.
> If you have to write down instructions I prefer doing it in the syntax
> FontForge uses instead of having to write down xml tags. But Denis has more
> experience with using xgridfit than me, so maybe he can elaborate.
>
> Is the xgridfit format good to use in UFO? Perhaps a subset of it, namely the
> subset of raw instructions, but even then I first have to see if xgridfit lets
> you work on the stack or not (i.e. whether it allows a syntax like "PUSHB_1
> 25; SRP0" and not just "SRP0(25)") -- I really don't know this. As said in my
> previous post: IMHO the UFO format should be as low-level as possible, which
> basically means taking each instruction and making a xml syntax for it, so the
> tiny example above could be like:
>  <pushb_1>
>   <b>25</b>
>  </pushb>
>  <spr0/>
> (I'm just quickly writing down something -- perhaps you want something like
> <instr t="spr0"/>).
>
> I think that higher-level instructions (which is the main use for xgridfit)
> are too program-specific to be used as main hinting syntax in the UFO format.
> But it could be stored in a program specific extension of the UFO file.
>
> Greetings
> Ben
>

Xgridfit never gets quite this low level: that's not what it's for. You'd write

<push>25</push>
<command name="SPR0"/>

and let the compiler figure out what to do with the <push>. But for
raw instructions I think that any XML markup is unnecessary. What TTX
does is just fine, though even that is a little higher level than
"raw." Perhaps Erik can explain a little more what the complications
are in having some standard way of storing instructions in a UFO: I
really don't understand it.

And a standard would be valuable. The trouble with storing something
in a .lib element is that everyone will do it a little differently so
it will be hard to come up with a tool that will handle it. Makes
collaboration difficult.

Peter