[Pkg-fonts-devel] Bug#776273: [googlefonts-discuss] sfd files for Play font

On 1 September 2015 at 04:55, <martinerikwerner@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

I'm maintaining the Play font in Debian, which currently builds the Play font from the sfd sources (attached) which was present in the google code repository. And I've been trying to figure out a bug[0] where the sfd files generate a rather different font than the ttf files provided by google webfonts.

First, I noticed that the sfd files are now gone with the move to GitHub, does this mean that the ttf files would be considered the canonical source for the font?

All the source files there not available elsewhere will resurface in github.com/googlefonts/ soon :)

Second, I have a few fixes that I've applied as a patch (attached) to the sfd files, to fix intersection, naming, and integral points, which still seems to be relevant for the current ttf files as well?

Sadly the RFN is a problem here.

The guy who did this, Jonas Hecksher, left the PlayTypes foundry, so it is de facto abandoned.

And the RFN - https://github.com/google/fonts/blob/master/ofl/play/OFL.txt#L2 - means how to move forwards is tricky.

BTW I believe that Debian must rename all OFL-RFN fonts (just as with Firefox.)

Another good reason why I strongly recommend against RFNs!

Lastly, and the main point, is there any specifics on how to generate the ttf files from sfd sources to make sure they are as similar to the google web fonts ttf:s as possible?

The *-TTF.sfd files were the exact TTFs in SFD format, so generating them more or less directly should do that; the export would need a few 'default' flags, like this:

https://github.com/ManufacturaInd/tinytypetools/blob/master/fontconvert/fontconvert#L131

Cheers
Dave