Re: [Devel] font format corner cases

[Just van Rossum]

Leonard Rosenthol wrote:

[ creating a cross platform Mac resource fork file format reader for FT ] 
>   The real question is whether there is enough interest to 
> warrant all the work.

As a long time Mac user I say: it's a waste of time... It will only cause more
trouble: any number of things can go wrong when you transfer Mac res fork files
to other platforms. Apple is moving away from res forks, too: on OSX flat .TTF
and .OTF files already work. Their .dfont "format" (a res fork in a data
fork...) only exists for truly embarrassing b/w compatibility reasons.

Mac TrueType suitcases can be converted to flat .TTF files without loss, in 3
lines of Python, probably 10 lines of C. I think existing Mac->PC TT converter
tools do slightly more, like add an OS/2 table if it doesn't exist. The FOND
resource offers *no* added value for TrueType. Tor Type1, the only interesting
bit of data in the FOND resource is the kerning, which is also in the AFM. MacOS
doesn't use AFM files, but AFM files are distributed with most Mac T1 fonts
anyway. And if it's lost, it can be regenerated from the FOND. The LWFN file
format can be converted to PFB without loss as well. And that's in fact exactly
what the FT Mac driver does internally, on the fly: it transforms an LWFN
"stream" to a PFB stream and feeds it to the PFB driver.

These Mac files are a x-platform nightmare, let's not continue that by adding
x-platform support for them: let's let these formats rest in peace...

Just