--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...> wrote:

> Peter Constable wrote:

> > But making declarations about fonts having "223 slots" and not knowing
> > that the platforms in question are not so limited and have not

been for

> > years (in the case of Windows, not since Windows 3.1) is speaking in
> > ignorance.
>
> I am not talking about platforms, I am talking about fonts.
>
> Does Adobe now sell, say, the Stone family with more than 223 characters
> in each variety?

I can't find any evidence that 'Stone family' (= designed by Stone?)
fonts have been extended, but Postscript fonts can now be much larger.
The details are supposed to be in
http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/font/5176.CFF.pdf 'The
Compact Font Format Specification' but it is not clear to me how a
glyph is selected, either in a PostScript environment or as part of an
OpenType specification. I presume the large fonts are the 'CID-keyed
fonts'. As far as I can make out, the large fonts are composed of
smaller fonts. I suspect these constituent fonts are limited to 256
(or probably just 255) glyphs, but while I can dimly see how the
constituent font is selected, it is not obvious how that glyph within
that constituent font is selected. Just possibly it's done by a
hardcoded name, but it's far from clear.

Interestingly, the Opentype Specification produced by Microsoft for
the 'post' table refers to 'the 258 glyphs in the standard Macintosh
TrueType font file', so all in all Peter Daniels does not seem so out
of touch. This specification file is dated 22/3/01, and I seem to
have downloaded it from Microsoft in September 2004.

Richard.