DTL OTMaster Summer Promotion — Typophile archive

Frank E. Blokland1 July 2014 · 00:53

From the 1st of July till 21 September the latest edition (3.7) of DTL OTMaster will be offered with a 50% discount on the standard licensing price of €255.

Version 3.7 contains a lot of new functionality. From the import/export of Ideographic Variation Sequences (IVS) to the editing of feature parameters, and from an autohinter for edited or newly added glyphs to support for COLR+CPAL tables. One can read about all details in Karsten Lücke’s wonderful manual.

Some use OTM for font-spelunking, other use it for Open(Type)-heart surgery. Some use it for compiling OpenType Layout features (directly in the font, or exported for proprietary workﬂows) by applying the elegant automatic subsetting, while others use it for instance for mark (to mark) positioning. OTM is the ultimate Swiss (or actually German/Dutch) knife for CFF- and TTF-based OpenType, TrueType, and TTC (TrueType Collection) fonts.

A complete listing of the functionality in OTM 3.7 can be found here. DTL OTMaster can be ordered directly with forenamed discount at DTL’s FontTools shop or at FontLab Ltd.

Frank E. Blokland8 August 2014 · 08:10

I’m very pleased to inform you that the OTM summer promo is a huge success. Obviously 50% discount makes a major difference for all of those doubters. ;-)

On Google’s font list currently there is a lively discussion on the development of Devanagari fonts and I was surprised to ﬁnd out that it was unknown to many that OTM generates a nice log ﬁle when compiling OT Layout features. This way errors and mistakes in the features can easily be traced. This is a excerpt from the discussion with an example that I generated with OTM 3.7:

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Just had a short look at the features. The lookup 'PreBaseSubstitutionslookup2' contains duplicate substitutions:

sub \isigndeva.tha \radeva_viramadeva by \isign_ra_virama.tha;
sub \isigndeva.tha \radeva_viramadeva by \isign_ra_virama.ja;

sub \isigndeva.tha \radeva_viramadeva \anusvaradeva by \isign_ra_virama_anusvara.tha;
sub \isigndeva.tha \radeva_viramadeva \anusvaradeva by \isign_ra_virama_anusvara.ja;

If one of each is removed then there seem to be some more errors:

HOT [ERROR] MarkToBase or MarkToMark error: A previous statment has already assigned the current mark class to another anchor point on the same glyph 'rvocalicdeva'. Skipping rule. [/Users/blokland/Desktop/Devnagari/Lohit.fea 814]
HOT [ERROR] MarkToBase or MarkToMark error: A previous statment has already assigned the current mark class to another anchor point on the same glyph 'kadeva'. Skipping rule. [/Users/blokland/Desktop/Devnagari/Lohit.fea 816]
HOT [ERROR] MarkToBase or MarkToMark error: A previous statment has already assigned the current mark class to another anchor point on the same glyph 'khadeva'. Skipping rule. [/Users/blokland/Desktop/Devnagari/Lohit.fea 818]
HOT [ERROR] MarkToBase or MarkToMark error: A previous statment has already assigned the current mark class to another anchor point on the same glyph 'ngadeva'. Skipping rule. [/Users/blokland/Desktop/Devnagari/Lohit.fea 820]
HOT [ERROR] MarkToBase or MarkToMark error: A previous statment has already assigned the current mark class to another anchor point on the same glyph 'chadeva'. Skipping rule. [/Users/blokland/Desktop/Devnagari/Lohit.fea 822]
HOT [ERROR] MarkToBase or MarkToMark error: A previous statment has already assigned the current mark class to another anchor point on the same glyph 'ttadeva'. Skipping rule. [/Users/blokland/Desktop/Devnagari/Lohit.fea 824]
HOT [ERROR] MarkToBase or MarkToMark error: A previous statment has already assigned the current mark class to another anchor point on the same glyph 'tthadeva'. Skipping rule. [/Users/blokland/Desktop/Devnagari/Lohit.fea 826]
HOT [ERROR] MarkToBase or MarkToMark error: A previous statment has already assigned the current mark class to another anchor point on the same glyph 'ddadeva'. Skipping rule.

[…]

Et cetera, et cetera.

[…]

HOT [ERROR] lookup name "abvmAboveBaseMarklookup1" not defined [/Users/blokland/Desktop/Devnagari/Lohit.fea 1215]
HOT [ERROR] lookup name "abvmAboveBaseMarklookup2" not defined [/Users/blokland/Desktop/Devnagari/Lohit.fea 1216]
HOT [ERROR] lookup name "abvmAboveBaseMarklookup3" not defined [/Users/blokland/Desktop/Devnagari/Lohit.fea 1217]
HOT [ERROR] lookup name "abvmAboveBaseMarklookup1" not defined [/Users/blokland/Desktop/Devnagari/Lohit.fea 1224]
HOT [ERROR] lookup name "abvmAboveBaseMarklookup2" not defined [/Users/blokland/Desktop/Devnagari/Lohit.fea 1225]
HOT [ERROR] lookup name "abvmAboveBaseMarklookup3" not defined [/Users/blokland/Desktop/Devnagari/Lohit.fea 1226]
HOT [ERROR] lookup name "abvmAboveBaseMarklookup1" not defined [/Users/blokland/Desktop/Devnagari/Lohit.fea 1233]
HOT [ERROR] lookup name "abvmAboveBaseMarklookup2" not defined [/Users/blokland/Desktop/Devnagari/Lohit.fea 1234]

[…]

Et cetera, et cetera.

[…]

HOT [FATAL] aborting because of errors
[ERROR] Hatch Features, feature file "/Users/blokland/Desktop/Devnagari/Lohit.fea" failed with error code 1.

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Another thing that came up in the discussion is the editing of the naming table. Also this can be exported in OTM and the text ﬁle can subsequently be easily edited (in batch, if applicable) and imported.

Martin Silvertant30 August 2014 · 07:28

I suppose this is a crude question to ask but what is DTL OTMaster useful for? I read that it's basically post-production software for fonts, but the descriptions remain very vague. What's the biggest upside of DTL OTMaster, and is it essential to be able to guarantee the quality of OT fonts?