[buildmasterotfs] + [buildcff2vf] – merge tools?

[frankrolf]

The current CFF2 build workflow requires first building static CFF2 files from all the sources (buildmasterotfs), and then merging them into a VF using buildcff2vf. I propose merging those tools (or to come up with a new command which basically calls those two tools consecutively).

[frankrolf]

In our font tools meeting today, we were wondering what @skef would think about all this.

[skef]

Once we switch to the VF-first/addfeatures workflow, we'll need to build "blank" or "shapeless" CFF2 fonts that we then add shaping to. I want to do this in two development stages:

1. Use tx to make CFF files, use a new (already mostly written) script to promote these to static CFF2-based OTFs (e.g. converting CFF char widths to static hmtx entries), then use FontTools to merge those as we do now
2. Write a tx extension analogous to mergefonts to do the merging ourselves (or most of it).

Anyway, since I think how we do this under the hood will change down the road, we might be better off putting all of this functionality under makeotf. In theory we could start doing that now -- there's no reason makeotf can't call buildmasterotfs and bulidcff2vf in the current system, it just boils down to deciding on a CLI.

So that's how I recommend proceeding: let's think about how to add the functionality we need to makeotf.