[Freetype] ANN: TTX 2.0 beta 1, for Win, Mac and Unix

[Just van Rossum]

Dear Font People,

I'm proud to announce a Brand New Release of TTX. It is now fully
OpenType-aware.

This is the first beta of version 2.0 -- I intend to release 2.0 final in a
couple of months.


What is TTX?

TTX is a tool to convert TrueType and OpenType fonts to an XML-based text format
(also called "TTX") and back. This enables you to edit TTF/OTF tables with a
text editor. It's a low level tool, meant for people who are not scared to
fiddle with technical details of the OT format.
Besides editing, TTX is extremely useful for Quality Assurance (or any testing
really) as it will easily let you find the differences between two versions of a
font.


Platforms

TTX is available as a ready to run executables for MacOS(X) and Windows as well
as source code for other platforms such as Linux.

The Mac version is a carbon app, running both on MacOS 8.6 and higher as well as
natively in MacOSX. However, if you would like a command line version for use in
Terminal.app, you currently need to build TTX from the source on OSX.

The Windows version is both a command line tool as well as a "droplet" (you can
drop files onto the application). In comes with a convenient installer (Thank
you Adam Twardoch!).

For other platforms, eg. Linux, you need to install TTX from the source.

Check out the file "documentation.html" for usage instructions.


License

TTX has a BSD-style OpenSource licence, meaning (among other things) you can use
it free of charge.


Download

Check the TTX download link at this page:

  http://fonttools.sourceforge.net/

The source code can be downloaded under the "FontTools" header. (FontTools is
the name of the library used to implement TTX, strictly speaking is FontTools a
superset of TTX.)

(TTX needs a new web page, but since I should go to sleep now, I'll leave that
for some other time... If you want to link to TTX,
http://fonttools.sourceforge.net/ is the place.)


News since the last version

- OpenType support, both CFF as well as all OpenType layout tables.
- A convenient Windows installer (Thank you Adam Twardoch!)
- Mac version is no longer completely separate, meaning the UI is
  a little worse than it used to be, but it works exactly the same
  as on Windows. (Less code, less documentation.)
- Lots of bug fixes. For more details see the file changes.txt.
- For even more details see the file Doc/ChangeLog.txt in the source distro.


Caveats

- CID-style CFF fonts are not fully supported
- TTX on the Mac currently can't create suitcase files, but it can read them.
- The ExtensionPos and ExtensionSubst subtables are currently not supported.
- Non-NULL FeatureParam subtables are currently not supported.
- Font containing name table entries containing control characters
  (eg. NUL bytes) can't currently be compiled. The error message is
  "reference to invalid character number".


Feedback

Please report any bugs to me, or file them in the bug tracker on 
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/fonttools/
There is a mailing list dedicated to TTX/FontTools which you are welcome to
join. Follow the "Lists" link, also at the above URL. For general questions and
discussions, the mailing list is preferred over private email.


Thank you for using TTX, and have fun with it!


Just