Anything that would make OpenType easier to nderstand would be most helpful. If such a site exists already, I’d love to hear about it.

No, I haven’t looked very hard.

i’ve started a little bit in our typowiki with ot_how-to. i’ve been wanting to expand on this, but haven’t had the time to yet. but i don’t see why we can’t use our own wiki for this.

also, not a wiki, but other resources include the AFDKO forum and the OpenType mail list.

The Typophile.com wiki could be the best place for a full-featured reference of OpenType mechanics. In its current shape it is a whos who of type and a really great area for primers on many fields.

The reasons why I think it might do well in its own space are somewhat complicated, but I’ll try and explain.

What I would like to see is a highly-interactive technical manual, meaning that the searching, categorizations and general feel is optimized for finding out what I want on a particular facet of OT. The Typowiki has a much rounder, more narrative feel, and is fully integrated as an accessory to the forums. The wiki results are returned with topic threads.

I would like the OT wiki to be a neutral place. Building it inside the Typowiki would possibly force any contributors to feel like they had to be a ’part of the scene’. Or it might.

I would like to see the data as open and as accessible as a Wikimedia Foundation project. In fact, more so than some of those are. I would like no one to ’own’ the wiki, so to speak, and be able to fork it, archive it or whatever-they-like it.

Uptime. When Typophile is down is when I need the reference info the most, because I’m getting more work done! :)

There is some relational wiki technology that is not used here that I am considering, that would be particularly helpful to a spec-centric wiki, and I am intrigued by how that could help. In fact, most of it is still being developed, so I guess that is neither a pro or con.

Choz Cunningham
!Exclamachine Type Foundry
The Snark