On 13-01-07 13:39, Shriramana Sharma wrote: > I have always wondered whether MS makes decisions re changes to OT > specs unilaterally (or just by consulting some people at Adobe) or > whether they they actually discuss this on publicly accessible mailing > lists beforehand or at least consult OSS implementors of OT like > Behdad, Jonathan Kew etc? > > I hope it's not as if they alone make the decision and the OSS world > has to follow suite because due to the fragmentation in open-source OT > engines (which HB-NG is intended to resolve) these have no voice... > > I see Behdad raising Unicode-property related issues on the Unicore > list, but of course he's present there courtesy Google IIUC, but I'm > not sure if he is consulted by MS before these changes are made.
Most of the OpenType format is technically equivalent to the international standard ISO/IEC 14496-22:2009 (called Open Font Format or OFF). It is a similar situation to most of Unicode being technically equivalent to the international standard ISO/IEC 10646:2012. Certain portions of OpenType (specifically, the complex-script shaping algorithms) are not part of the OFF. They are developed and maintained by Microsoft. Other portions of OpenType are developed in-sync with Apple as they stem from the TrueType format. There are two publicly-accessible discussion lists (opentype-migration-l...@indx.co.uk and http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/mpeg-OTspec/ ), on which practically all proposals for changes or extensions of the OpenType format are discussed. Behdad is at least on one of these lists, as are representatives from software vendors such as Microsoft, Adobe, Apple and from numerous font vendors. Anyone is free to join the lists, post proposals or suggestions. The atmosphere on the lists is very friendly, people's contributions are being heard and treated seriously regardless of whether one is a representative of a large company, or just an interested individual. (For example, I joined the OpenType discussion list when I was still a student at university, and my suggestions were taken into account on numerous occasions, even then.) The entire process is very "participatory". Formal decisions and changes are being developed and voted in the appropriate ISO committee responsible for the ISO/IEC 14496-22 standard. Of course writing high-quality language of the ISO standard is not an easy job, so most of the hard work is being done by representatives of the largest companies. As I've written above, there is one aspect of OpenType which is not-so-much part of that process, and that's the shaping algorithms for complex scripts. They're not part of the ISO standard and their initial versions are being published by Microsoft as separate specs, quite "unilaterally". This has to do mostly with the fact that the support for additional writing systems is usually researched and implemented at Microsoft internally, typically before a major Windows release, along with a corresponding font or fonts. Then, some time after that Windows version gets published, Microsoft turns the implementation of the OpenType Layout shaping for a given writing system into a spec and publishes that. Then, improvements from the community flow into the future revisions of those specs. Regards, Adam -- May success attend your efforts, -- Adam Twardoch (Remove "list." from e-mail address to contact me directly.) _______________________________________________ HarfBuzz mailing list HarfBuzz@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/harfbuzz
