OpenType Panel: failure to validate scripts in Arial and Code2000

[surge]

I have tried opening a couple of fairly complicated Unicode fonts (Arial Unicode MS and Code2000) in AsiaFont Studio 4, chiefly to see how they work. And then tried to check their scripts in the OpenType panel, but every time the compiler would abort with this message:

Code:

[ERROR] <font name> aborting because of errors

. No explanations, no hints, no nothing. Could you please explain the reason why the compiler in your program would fail to validate perfectly functional fonts?

[Adam Twardoch (FontLab)]

AsiaFont Studio 4 is based on FontLab 4 code, released in 2001. Back then, the OpenType specification was very young and the Adobe FDK library that FontLab 4 and AsiaFont Studio 4 use to generate OpenType Layout tables only supported a small percentage of the specification. Also, the way the OpenType Layout features were decompiled into the source notation was not too sophisticated.

You may have more luck if you open the font in the demo version of FontLab Studio 5 (which has a more up-to-date decompiler), then in the OpenType panel, save the decompiled feature definition code into a .fea file, open that file in AsiaFont Studio's OpenType panel and generate the font.

Regards,
Adam

[surge]

Adam, it took you guys only 30-odd days to write 5 lines of text, that's impressive and suggests a definite possibility for a truly constructive back and forth with your company.
The most impressive part, however, is that those 5 lines are completely and entirely useless. Allow me to remind you that Arial Unicode was released in 1998 and Code2000 in 2000 (surprise, surprise!), so there is no chance that a library written in 2001 could be based on a less detailed specification than that used to create these fonts years before.

Obviously the trick you suggested didn't work, and why would it? AsiaFont still chocked during compilation, and came up with a series of "token too long; max length is 31" fatal errors, halting on every second or third class definition.

I have to give it to you guys, this is one of the most spectacularly pathetic things I've ever encountered - a font editor with an astronomical price tag on it failing to work with the leading fonts in the industry. FontLab programmers must be really something and the pricing policy is unquestionably a stroke of genius under the circumstances.

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