Re: new release?

[Werner LEMBERG]

>>> You used to release a new version around this time of year. What
>>> are your plans this time around?  Are you waiting for some
>>> official specs for COLRv1?
>>
>> Not really for the official specs, but for green light that the
>> COLRv1 stuff is OK to be published as experimental but stable.
> 
> The OpenType 1.9  preview is out for review
> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/otspec190alpha/ot190alpha
> - but we recently still added a couple of compact representations for
> scaling:
> https://github.com/googlefonts/colr-gradients-spec/pull/290

OK, thanks.

> These are not implemented on the FreeType side yet.  I plan to
> implement them soon.  I need to decide whether it would make sense
> to consolidate the API and only return transformation matrices
> instead of the individual structs for rotate, translate, etc.  If I
> keep the structs, I may need to add values for center positions for
> the newer tables Paint*AroundCenter.

Sounds reasonable.  Shall I wait for this to happen?

> I am not sure what the definition of "experimental" is - but I can't
> guarantee API stability yet.  If that's not required for
> experimental, I am okay with releasing this as "experimental".

If we decide to do a release earlier, I will

  (a) add 'experimental' to the `@since` field, and
  (b) add to the `CHANGES` file that API stability isn't guaranteed:
      both functions and structures might change without notice, and
      the major version number of FreeType gets not increased if there
      are changes to the ABI that are not backward-compatible.

> Also, variations support is not in the COLRv1 implementation yet.

Do you expect API changes for this, too?

> I plan to familiarize myself with the built-in variations
> interpolation capabilities that FT has - pointers to welcome.

The essential code is in file `src/truetype/ttgxvar.c`.  I think it is
quite well documented.  If you find problems or hard-to-read code,
please add comments and submit them as merge requests :-)


    Werner