Rationale

Whereas, OpenType fonts are the main type of font used in computing today;

Whereas, despite the increasing acceptance of high DPI screens, such screens have not totally overtaken the market as was once predicted;

Whereas, even high DPI screens still require hinting for best display;

Whereas, TrueType hinting remains the best way to hint OpenType fonts in the sense that it gives the most control to the font developer;

Whereas, Microsoft developed in the 1990’s a programming language known as VTTTalk;

Whereas, VTTTalk instructions are written as UTF-8 into the OpenType font table marked TSI3;

Whereas, Microsoft has open sourced the compiler which converts VTTTalk into TrueType instructions;

Whereas, despite this act, however generous it may be on the surface, Microsoft refuses to provide to the community a way of generating VTTTalk instructions (the VTT GUI);

Whereas, the Modular Font Editor K Foundation, Inc., opposes in principle the necessity of proprietary software to create fonts in open file formats,

Then, therefore, The Modular Font Editor K Foundation, Inc. opens for bids from the public the following signed grant proposal dated this 22nd of April, 2022, entitled “Visual TrueType GUI Rewrite” and with the reference code MFEK Foundation Grant № 6, Series of 2022.

The Foundation estimates this grant will take two months to complete.

This is document revision 0.

Bottom bid

The Foundation’s bottom bid for this grant is US$7,000. The Foundation may reject bids above this bottom bid, but also may not, especially if good reasons are given for the higher bid (e.g. our time estimate is wrong). The Foundation proposes a payment schedule of 2x$3,500.

How to bid

The Standard Terms apply to this invitation. That page also explains how to bid, please read it if interested.

Work description

The more we can create free software that does the same job as Visual TrueType, the better. However, the minimum required is:

  1. creation of a graphical program that can create the needed TSI* tables based on the glyphs in a UFO font, covering all of the code generation tasks that VTT itself can do, unless
    one or more of the code generation tasks done by VTT you are able to demonstrate to us is very difficult to achieve and would take much longer than we predict
  2. while we prefer the final product use Rust and GTK, we are willing to waive this in this exceptional circumstance because Visual TrueType and TT hinting is such a skilled area. Bidders, please state your preferred language/GUI toolkit if it will not be Rust and GTK. We of course remain totally unable to accept proprietary languages and toolkits.
  3. your work product will be checked against the Microsoft Visual TrueType command line compiler.
Signed,
Fredrick R. Brennan  

Chairman of the Board
on behalf of the MFEK Foundation, Inc. 
gpg: Signature made Sat 23 Apr 2022 02:25:14 AM EDT
gpg:                using DSA key 98F28F767470129FBE3B054CE2154DD1A1C77B8B
gpg: Good signature from "Modular Font Editor K Foundation, Inc. (Grants department)"