Tokyo AFDKO Workshop (AM Session)

To those who were able to attend the Tokyo AFDKO Workshop that was held at Morisawa‘s Tokyo office on June 25th, thank you for your participation (and for enduring my poor Japanese speaking abilities)! I hope that you learned new ways in which particular AFDKO tools can be used to make your CID-keyed font production work (or workflow) more effective and less time-consuming.
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Two AFDKO-related Tool Updates

I spent this evening in Gyeongju, Korea enhancing two AFDKO-related tools, extract-cids.pl and extract-gids.pl.

These tools are tx filters, and simply output the list of CIDs or GIDs in a font. I had been using another tool, mkrange.pl, to turn the list into ranges. One of the enhancements, which is the addition of an “-r” option, makes the mkrange.pl tool no longer necessary. In other words, the following two command lines have the same result:

% extract-cids.pl -r <font>
% extract-cids.pl <font> | mkrange.pl

The extract-cids.pl tool was additionally enhanced with an “-s” option, which outputs the ranges on a single line using a comma separator. This makes the output very convenient in terms of repurposing it, such as copying it, then pasting it into a new command line as the argument of the “-g” option that is supported by many AFDKO tools. Consider the following two command lines and their output:

% extract-cids.pl -r cidfont.ps
/0-/8358
/8720-/9081
/9084-/9353

% extract-cids.pl -r -s cidfont.ps
/0-/8358,/8720-/9081,/9084-/9353

Enjoy!

IRG 38

I am currently in Gyeongju (경주시/慶州市), Republic of Korea (ROK), attending IRG 38. For those who are not aware, the IRG (Ideographic Rapporteur Group) is an ad hoc subcommittee of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 (aka WG2), and is charged with all matters related to CJK Unified Ideographs. In other words, all CJK Unified Ideograph repertoires, the latest being Extension D, are the direct result of work by the IRG. I am attending IRG 38 as the sole US and Unicode delegate, and this is the fifth IRG meeting I have attended. IRG meetings are week-long working meetings, and are held twice per year.
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Traveling Abroad

I don’t travel very often as part of my work at Adobe, but when I do, it is always to East Asia. (I have never been to Europe.) The last time I traveled as part of my job was two years ago, to attend IRG 34 in Nagaoka, Japan.
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Be warned…

For those who signed up to attend the AFDKO Workshop that takes place on the 25th of this month in Tokyo, be warned that I will be conducting my portion, which is from 10AM until noon, in Japanese, or at least in my rendition of Japanese. ☺

Seriously, though, I hope that my Japanese skills, or lack thereof, don’t serve as an impediment for those who attend this workshop. My focus will be to demonstrate how particular AFDKO tools, such as tx, mergeFonts, rotateFont, autohint, and so on, can be used to not only build, but also to directly manipulate CID-keyed fonts. My hope is that I can convey useful information that can serve as inspiration for making font production workflows more efficient and less time-consuming.

For those who are attending, note that materials will be provided that will be based on a small subset of Kozuka Gothic Medium. If any attendee wants to use their own font data for this purpose, I suggest that you bring along an Adobe-Japan1-0 or greater OpenType/CFF font or CIDFont resource. I have prepared scripts that will quickly create the same materials, but using a different base font.

Wish me luck in finishing the accompanying presentation, which currently has 24 slides. In Japanese.

I am very much looking forward to meeting everyone who has signed up to attend this workshop!

Preparing for the Tokyo AFDKO Workshop

I am spending most of my time preparing for the Tokyo AFDKO Workshop that Morisawa is hosting at their Tokyo office on the 25th of this month, which is a Monday. At this point, most of the sample data is ready, and I now need to prepare the accompanying presentation slides.

This will be my first opportunity to engage a larger number of font developers, and to convey to them useful tips, tricks, and techniques for several AFDKO tools, particularly tx, mergeFonts, and rotateFont. My portion of the workshop, which will consume the entire morning, will be about building and manipulating CID-keyed fonts, to include controlling the assignment of CIDs (glyphs) to FDArray elements. I will also cover the use of the special-purpose Adobe-Identity-0 ROS. I am very much looking forward to this event, and working directly with many font developers.

Note that this workshop will be conducted in Japanese.

AFDKOワークショップ

ご注意:6月25日開催のAFDKOワークショップに多数のお申し込みをいただきありがとうございます。定員に達しましたので、AFDKOワークショップへの受付を締め切らさせていただきました。お申込みいただいた皆様とお会いできることを楽しみにしております。よろしくお願い申し上げます。

2012年6月25日、株式会社モリサワのご協力により、同社東京本社におきましてAFDKOワークショップを開催いたしますのでお知らせいたします。

弊社のAFDKO(Adobe© OpenType©フォント開発キット)を利用されてフォント制作を行われている開発者の方々を対象としたワークショップとなります。それぞれのツールについて有効な利用法について、弊社米国本社のKen Lunde(ケン・ランディ)を含む弊社スタッフが説明する予定です。ぜひご参加ください。
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Stay tuned…

As alluded to in the February 8, 2012 CJK Type Blog article, there is a good chance that an AFDKO Workshop will take place in Japan, very soon. Please stay tuned to this blog for details, which may emerge in less than a week.

ISO/IEC 10646:2012 Published!

ISO/IEC 10646:2012 (Third Edition) was just published. This is the first version of the standard that includes multiple-column Code Charts for Extension B, and for CJK Compatibility Ideographs. Another significant aspect of ISO/IEC 10646:2012 is that it is equivalent to Unicode Version 6.1.

For Adobe, the publishing of this new version of the standard represents a significant milestone, because it means that every Adobe-Japan1-6 kanji is either directly encoded, or is directly associated with a registered IVS in the IVD (Ideographic Variation Database).

Speaking of Unicode Version 6.1, the printed version of the Core Specification is available via POD from Lulu, and at a very attractive price.

Hong Kong or Bust!

I just received good news, in the form of confirmation that both of my ATypI Hong Kong 2012 presentation abstracts were accepted, which means that I will definitely be attending this conference. I alluded to this in the March 30th, 2012 CJK Type Blog article. One of the abstracts is for a 30-minute presentation entitled Kazuraki: Under The Hood, which will immediately follow a 30-minute presentation entitled Kazuraki: Its Art & Design, that will be presented by my colleagues Taro Yamamoto (山本太郎) and Ryoko Nishizuka (西塚涼子). For those who are not aware, Ryoko is the typeface designer of Kazuraki (かづらき), which is the centerpiece of both 30-minute presentations. The other is for a three-hour workshop entitled Manipulating CID-keyed Fonts Using AFDKO Tools, which will be co-presented by my colleague Masataka Hattori (服部正貴).

I am very much looking forward to attending an ATypI conference for the first time, and meeting many people. If you are planning to attend ATypI Hong Kong 2012, please be sure to introduce yourself to me, in case I don’t introduce myself to you first.