On Wed, 2008-01-02 at 19:03, Dave Crossland wrote: > FontLab VFBs are _not_ free formats. There are two I know of, UFO and SFD. There are also ttf, otf, pfb, etc.
Reading these standard formats is trivial, there isn't the huge loss of information you get when you go from source code to executable. There's very little info stored in the sfd which is not in the ttf/otf final font. The distinction between source and final product isn't really relevant in the font world -- or I don't think it is. Don't know what's in VFB as FontLab doesn't have any description they can provide. I assume they are similar in capabilities to an sfd file. Adam T. has asked me for a description of the sfd format (and didn't tell me not to tell others), so at some point FontLab might support that too. > > The XML schema "UFO" developed by the Robofab project could be a free > format, suitable for FontForge-FontLab collaboration since both > programs already read and write it, but I'm not sure it technically > can encode all the information that is encoded in a VFB file. UFO directories do not contain GPOS/GSUB info in their spec, they appear to be primarily designed to store the glyph outlines. The RoboFab people tell me GPOS/GSUB data can be included by throwing in Adobe feature files. Unfortunately Adobe feature files cannot express everything that goes into GPOS/GSUB either. So assuming VFB files can contain all GPOS info, then I believe UFO directories cannot express everything in them. _______________________________________________ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
