Microsoft Font Validator gains python scripting ability, and ttc-splitter/merger scripts

Hin-Tak Leung

The latest FontVal [1] command line tool gains the ability to run simple python scripts - it treats *.py arguments as such.  There are 6 scripts in the 'scripting-examples' directory. This includes a ttc merger, a ttc splitter, ttx-l (which does something similar to 'ttx -l' of ttx/FontTools), a headtime script for reading modification/creation times.
And a dump one which just prints the arguments it is called with.

The binary bundle is 4MB larger from the embedded python interpreter. It runs 'simple' scripts - those 6 obviously work e.g. 'FontValidator.exe ttc-merger.py out.ttc font1.ttf font2.ttf ...' YMMV.

The 6th is a script intended for an upcoming "expert mode" of setting rasterization test parameters (there are about a dozen), and isn't of any use to anybody else yet.
 
It is built off the embedding-ironpython [2] branch. The effort was born out of yet another discussion about 'porting Font Val from C# to python...' - which I tend to respond with 'apparently IronPython allows you to use C# classes as python classes, and vice versa'. So it finally happened.

[1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/hp-pxl-jetready/files/Microsoft Font Validator/FontVal-empy-bin-2016_05_07.zip/download

[2] https://github.com/HinTak/Font-Validator/tree/embedding-ironpython

[3] https://github.com/behdad/fonttools/issues/416#issuecomment-216329175