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1. niconiconi (niconiconi@cybre.space)'s status on Monday, 30-May-2022 00:13:27 UTC niconiconi

   • Jaqueek

   @alexandra @Jaqueek Subpixel antialiasing and font hinting can have its own book (books?) too. To do that, TrueType uses a virtual machine and embeds bytecode in fonts.

   This is the instruction set of the TrueType machine. https://developer.apple.com/fonts/TrueType-Reference-Manual/RM05/Chap5.html

   "What is your favorite CPU architecture?"
   "TrueType."

   • Zack Weinberg (zwol@hackers.town)'s status on Monday, 30-May-2022 00:13:26 UTC Zack Weinberg

     in reply to

     • Jaqueek

     @niconiconi @alexandra @Jaqueek to make it even worse, the main reason this machine exists is that microsoft and/or apple didn't want to pay royalties for adobe's patented, declarative hinting system

     Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅 likes this.
   • niconiconi (niconiconi@cybre.space)'s status on Monday, 30-May-2022 00:14:02 UTC niconiconi

     in reply to

     • Zack Weinberg
     • Jaqueek

     @zwol @alexandra @Jaqueek and to make it worse, the TrueType hinting machine itself is also proprietary, patented by Apple. Before 2010 free software was forced to use the subpar Auto-Hinting workaround.

     Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅 likes this.
   • Luci for Chai Tea (zens@merveilles.town)'s status on Monday, 30-May-2022 00:14:21 UTC Luci for Chai Tea

     in reply to

     • Adrian Cochrane
     • Zack Weinberg
     • Jaqueek

     @alcinnz @zwol @niconiconi @alexandra @Jaqueek the main motivation for the creation of opentype is the world in which both truetype and postscript fonts exist snd are mutually incompatible really sucked - a lot. so they extended truetype to be able to contain postscript fonts and called it opentype. and added extra stuff like ligatures and alternates and stuff

     Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅 likes this.
   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 30-May-2022 00:14:22 UTC Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     • Zack Weinberg
     • Luci for Chai Tea
     • Jaqueek

     @zens @zwol @niconiconi @alexandra @Jaqueek I thought both Apple & Microsoft both had their own similarly-named formats? And that WOFF is a slight variation on OpenType?

     Can't say I'm all that ontop of this aspect...

   • Luci for Chai Tea (zens@merveilles.town)'s status on Monday, 30-May-2022 00:14:22 UTC Luci for Chai Tea

     in reply to

     • Adrian Cochrane
     • Zack Weinberg
     • Jaqueek

     @alcinnz @zwol @niconiconi @alexandra @Jaqueek
     1. apple and microsoft created truetype in a joint effort to not pay adobe any licensing fees
     2. opentype is truetype with some extra features
     3. woff is just opentype

   • Luci for Chai Tea (zens@merveilles.town)'s status on Monday, 30-May-2022 00:14:23 UTC Luci for Chai Tea

     in reply to

     • Adrian Cochrane
     • Zack Weinberg
     • Jaqueek

     @alcinnz @zwol @niconiconi @alexandra @Jaqueek are there modern font formats other than opentype and woff?

   • Luci for Chai Tea (zens@merveilles.town)'s status on Monday, 30-May-2022 00:14:24 UTC Luci for Chai Tea

     in reply to

     • Zack Weinberg
     • Jaqueek

     @zwol @niconiconi @alexandra @Jaqueek it wasn’t just the hinting system. if you think a bytecode for hinting was bad, adobe’s postscript fonts were literally just programs in a scripting language in their entirety.

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 30-May-2022 00:14:24 UTC Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     • Zack Weinberg
     • Luci for Chai Tea
     • Jaqueek

     @zens @zwol @niconiconi @alexandra @Jaqueek I believe all the modern font fileformats do this too! And I might have heard that bytecode is poorly specified & turing complete?