[texhax] The 'TeX ' metric table in OpenType fonts

[Doug McKenna]

All (well, okay, Any) -

I've been messing around with OpenType/TrueType fonts, trying to 
(re-)understand how the data structures work under the hood.  Basically, 
a ".otf" (or ".ttf") file is an extensible list of tagged tables, 
containing all variety of information.  Any software that reads the file 
has the ability to ignore any table it doesn't understand.

There's dozens of table types, some for different platforms, different 
software packages, etc.  I am trying to put together a list of as many 
table tags as I can collect.

One in particular caught my eye: the FontForge program supports
creating a 'TeX ' table type.  It's documented here (about halfway
down the page):

 <http://cle.linux.org.tw/~edt1023/fontforge/non-standard.html>

But it plainly does not support all the information found in a ".tfm" 
file.

Are there any fonts out there that incorporate this information?  Was 
this just a FontForge experiement that went nowhere, because the only 
program that cares about TeX Font Metrics is ... TeX, and it doesn't know 
about OpenType font internals?  Is it for the benefit of XeTeX?

I can't find any other substantive information or discussion about this 
OpenType table type, except the above link.

Que pasa?


[And Happy Thanksgiving!]

Doug McKenna