[CREATE] CREATE Digest, Vol 131, Issue 2

[Hin-Tak Leung]

> Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2016 19:25:24 -0400
 From: Gregory Pittman <gpittman at iglou.com>

> I guess the question I would have, as someone not a font
 guru or
 creator, is what validates the Font Validator? In other
 words, if Font
 Validator finds a problem in a font, how do you know the
 problem is the
 font and not FV?

That's an excellent question. Until it was open-sourced last November, I would think the answer (if you get an answer at all!) from Microsoft about its design,
would be "because I said so!".

A year on, since I first saw the code (I saw it and fixed it merely to build, about 3 months between it went public, pending approval from above), almost all the major things I did was just to fill in the missing parts that Microsoft did not release, or adding some features which are deemed "needed and useful" (like CFF and SVG support, which was not in the original). I have had help and discussions on both FreeType -devel and the opentype mailing lists. When one is filling in missing parts, or adding support for new font features, whatever I come up with, is better than not having the new parts. So that question hasn't really needed answering.

Even this latest activity - collecting all the reports against all the fonts shipped on a Fedora system - for me, is just to look for "A1112" . It is the status code from FV itself saying it cannot cope with the current situation; that's a clear indicator to where it needs improving. Other than that, I do not look at individual reports. I do not try to decide whether it is a problem with individual font or FV itself. A1112 - FV itself saying it cannot cope , is already a lot to do, and I try very hard not to look at individual fonts.

As I said in my previous post, I am just delivering the message. I don't decide what it should or should not do, except "A1112 - FV cannot cope with this font/glyph". I do not look at individual reports.

The code is out there - people can look at why/what it does, and hopefully, fix some problem with FV itself, if that is the case.

Yes, I see I have repeated "I do not look at individual reports" many times - filling in missing not-released parts, and trying to look at area where there is a clear problem, like A1112, is already a lot to do. I find it quite draining and exhausting, when people want to argue about individual items in specific reports of their favourite fonts. I do not look at individual reports. I collected 3000 reports on fedora, and posted ~1500 of those. I am running the code against my private buggy stash of cjk fonts at the moment, and it will generate another ~2000 reports in perhaps a week's time. I also have ~700 for apple shipped fonts and ~300 for microsoft shipped fonts. I do not look at individual reports, and do not wish to engage in discussions about specific items in specific report... I have 4000 reports [3000 fedora + 700 apple + 300 microsoft] already, and will have another ~2000 in about a week's time. I do not look at individual reports.

The code is out there - people can look at why/what it does, and hopefully, fix some problem with FV itself, if that is the case. I do not look at individual reports.