Re: [Freefont-bugs] What's next?

[Steve White]

Christian,

On Feb 12, 2008 8:27 AM, Christian Perrier <address@hidden> wrote:
> (not sure that I can write to -bugs, hence CC'ing you)
>
> Quoting Steve White (address@hidden):
> > Hi,
> >
> > Now that Freefont is in synch with Debian ttf-freefont, what's next?
> >
> > Well, I applied one outstanding patch that had never been applied.
> > As near as I can tell, this is the last of the outstanding patches.
>
> Are there bugs that are still opened in the old bug tracking system of
> Primoz? I don't remember many and the most recent ones were opened by
> /me with the Debian maintainer hat.
>
If you mean the Freefont bug tracking system...yes, 25 or so.  And
somebody submitted another yesterday.  I've found several that are
really problems.

Also, I want to double-check that what was fixed by the applied
patches, was really fixed: I have my doubts about a couple.

The worst is that kerning is not working in many applications.  I have
investigated this, and found that it is a complicated issue (see the
bug report).   This really has to be fixed before we proceed.

It is crucial that the font be on the whole, usable, for its main
purposes.  Right now it's lacking badly in several aspects.

But first, I have to get it working with a recent Fontforge.  I have
alerted the Fontforge maintainers of the problem.

> Next steps would then be thinking about enhancing the font. Roughly,
> two choices can be made:
>
> - continue the run for Unicode ranges completeness by filling in gaps
> (that implies finding designed glyphs)
>
One guy already wrote me about some glyphs in some Indian ranges.
Some of them look usable.

As I said, my personal thrust is going to be technical symbols, mostly
for mathematics.

> - polish the current glyphs with better hinting, better general look,
> etc.
>
> ...two tasks, indeed, which I don't have any clue about, though..:)
>
I am also curious about the hinting.  Many glyphs seem to be
hand-hinted -- the auto-hint feature of FontForge gives completely
different results.  And they sometimes turn out to be hinted badly.
So...what are the guidelines for hinting by hand, or for using the
auto-hint feature?

I have similar questions about kerning...

If somebody could point me to documents explaining the algorithms used
for hinting and kerning, I would appreciate it very much.  I'm just
guessing now.

I also want to draw up some policies, regarding the general direction
of the effort, submission of changes, style guidelines, etc.

(For those readers who are rolling their eyes at this point: This is
not just to be legalistic--the intent is to avoid conflict and
confusion that would be counterproductive to the effort, by providing
a point of reference.)

Well, lots to do.