STAT table false warn again? "nameID out of range"

[justvanrossum]

This seems similar to #180, but is about an AxisNameID, which in my font refers to nameID 2. I don't see how that's illegal.

[justvanrossum]

The test for axis.axisNameID passes false for allowPredefined:

ots/src/stat.cc

Lines 87 to 89 in 516e40a

	if (!ValidateNameId(axis.axisNameID, false)) {
	return true;
	}

[justvanrossum]

(This is btw. a side effect of fonttools more aggressively reusing name IDs.)

[khaledhosny]

This is intentional, from the spec:

The axisNameID field provides a name ID that can be used to obtain strings from the 'name' table that can be used to refer to the axis in application user interfaces. The name ID must be greater than 255 and less than 32768.

We probably can relax the check if there is a strong case for it, but I feel a bit uneasy about allowing spec violation in a new table with not many existing implementations as who knows what crazy stuff implementations might assume based on what the spec is saying.

[justvanrossum]

Ok, but then we have a serious problem in fonttools with name ID reusing. I'll open an issue there.

[justvanrossum]

(Thanks for your quick answer, btw.!)

[behdad]

We probably can relax the check if there is a strong case for it, but I feel a bit uneasy about allowing spec violation in a new table with not many existing implementations as who knows what crazy stuff implementations might assume based on what the spec is saying.

Unfortunately the spec continues to encode unnecessary and bogus restrictions. That is because of how changes to the spec are made and reflect personal opinion of the editor, not something a lot of stakeholders agree with.

[justvanrossum]

The spec has been updated to relax this requirement:

The axisNameID field provides a name ID that can be used to obtain strings from the 'name' table that can be used to refer to the axis in application user interfaces. A defined name ID can be used if strings for that name ID have the appropriate string for an axis name. Otherwise, name IDs must be greater than 255 and less than 32768.

Does ots still warn about it?