[CREATE] otf•UI product vision, warm off the press...

[peter sikking]

Dave wrote:

> btw: thinking through this, I do believe that the way the
> character entry – character encoding – standard font tables +
> mandatory (automatic) otf has come about, there are no cases
> where user-controllable otf _must_ be used to get just the
> correct glyph to display.
> 
> if I am wrong about this, I would really appreciate a chat with
> an expert in this field.
> 
> I think this depends on what you mean by "correct" glyphs;

true, I was not clear enough. I was really talking about that
it does not need any otf to get a ‘5’ or a ‘b’ put in and
displayed.

for me it is possible to think of all the environments where
there is near-zero typography knowledge (homes, offices, yeah
just about anywhere) and to see that for _latin_ script there
is are no cases where user-controllable otf _must_ be used to
get just the correct glyph to display.

after all, these people did get their 5s and bs in for decades.

for non-latin scripts, I do not know this (note: user-controllable,
not the automatic stuff).

> I think 'unreadable' is an overstatement

in usability terms (context: doing a convincing presentation)
it is a goner.

> (Of course, a program could have some 'smart' features to activate optional OpenType features when available, such as detecting a col of numbers, the availability of a tnum feature in the font, and thus activating it.)

right on: I was already thinking that a set of recommendations
(only based on what is hard-as-nails in the otf standard) must
be part of the deliverable. another one we discussed in the
video session: turn all ligatures off when the letter-spacing is
not the default.


    --ps

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