Sat 10 Dec 2016 04:49:53 PM UTC, comment #5:
Hi Adam,
(Again a bug reposrt isn't a good medium for this kind of discussion. Bot OK.)
Your suggestion oabout deleting problematic ranges is a possibility.
The issues I have in mind are not with glyphs per se, but mostly with lookup tables. Examples: There are several open questions about combinations in the Indic ranges (there are even a few places where Serif behaves differently from Sans). Some may be technical issues -- but always I need a native reader to check Kerning behaves very strangely in right-to-left scripts -- this has taken an awful lot of time in the past few years, and I udnerstand it a little better, but I'm not even sure it's a font problem.
As to the 2012 release, the deal is it works fine on the systems it was targeted at, but not on modern systems. Keeping the old stuff is not an option. I agree that "strictly better" is an ideal not always attainable. Here there are ranges that were working pretty well on the old systems, but have one or two killing bugs in new systems.
Do you think you could help with any of those?
One thing I really should do, professionally speaking, is collect all my scattered notes about problems, and the open bug reports, and make a document fit for public viewing, in the form of a triage. (I've started that a couple of times, but the effort always fizzeled out.) What I have now is lists of various scripts, with various problems (some pretty serious). This should be done in any case.
I haven't brought the issue of testing up with an Indic group for some time. It's complicated: here you'll get far too much help, and there a surprise political explosion. Trust me, it's complicated.
Each of these will all take some time, which just now I can't spare.
But all the technical issues have kind of taken a back seat. A few months ago, a very bad legal question arose -- the entire project as such is in jeopardy. I have been assured that people are working on it, but I haven't heard anything for some time. My focus righ now is on getting that sorted out.
As to Debian: I'm sorry, I cannot take on the timetable of other projects. Things are messy enough as they are.
Keep bugging me about it, Adam (but please be nice). I am concerned about this, and (once the legal issue is resolved) I will find some time. Maybe between us we can sort out a way for you to personally take part.
|