In FontLab, under Options/Generating OpenType & TrueType/Kerning there's an option for Export old-style non-OpenType "kern" table. In the past, this was necessary because so few applications supported OT hinting tables. Now we live in a futuristic font utopia where all our dreams have been realized. Should I turn this thing off now? To be honest, I just kind of forgot it was there.
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It is not that the GPOS table causes the problems but some other issues that might cause validation problems. Like the lengt of the family name.
TrueType-flavored OpenType fonts may contain both the ‘kern’ and the ‘GPOS’ table. My recommendation is to put both in such a font.
I always limit the old kern table to 2500 pairs. I find this usually takes care of the important stuff such as period, hyphen, and quote parents. It usually ends up covering the Latin1 set too.
*) Though unfortuantely I can’t remember where.
Ah… that’s interesting! We have never encountered that with DTL’s TT-flavored OT fonts and also never heard of this before. I would very much like to see examples (and hence a good reason to change the production over here).
Although I have never encountered the problem you described, it’s always possible that strange things happen. So, whenever you recall how and where the interference of the two tables occurred, please let me know.
Concerning the OpenType status PDF, it’s time for an update, I reckon.
Yes, that’d be great! Though for backwards compatibility, it’s still good.
Anyway, backwards compatibility sucks, but it makes sense.
OpenType is the present already for more than ten years I would say. And if open source software such as Abiword, LibreOffice or OpenOffice fails to support current standards then I’m sure there will be some volunteers to fix this?
@Khaled%20Hosny proposed help to Scribus some time ago but said the developers just don't care. Previously he started implementing harfbuzz for LibreOffice as well but that didn't went to completion.
Bummer. Got my hopes up, ya know? Same results when using a dummy dsig (“Gentium Bis,” I named the resulting variant). Ah well, I’ve been switching to LaTeX anyway, and pretty much every browser has good OT support.
Not everybody can update things... a great many people are still on archaic technology, whether from poverty, morality or bureaucratic decree. There are excellent reasons to abandon them (us, actually), but it still feels a little cold.
Not that it’s a big deal – it’s just kerning, after all!
Not sure if anybody is still following this, but no matter. Gentium doesn’t work correctly in the Linux version of LibreOffice either, so it’s not just a Windows thing. Still, plenty of fonts work fine – contextual alternates in a word processor was a very welcome surprise.
I just tried it but it doesn't expand the class kerns. I tried various formats and the old-style kerning checkbox but the AFM contains exactly the same table as the original CFF-flavored OT font containing class kerning. I couldn't find an option to manually expand the table.