(2022-06-08, 13:55)Orion Pobursky Wrote: My rebuttal to this is that txt2dat exists and should be used. Having authors stitch together the letters piecemeal leads to the spacing and kerning inconsistencies that had us decide to not include fonts in the first place.
I have yet to get usable results from txt2dat (via LDPE). Now I have more work to do on this, and not to say that things should be designed around my personal workflow, but perhaps the takeaway is that the LDraw policy should accommodate the widest possible range of workflows. If there are approved prims that could be placed in even a standard text editor, that's more inclusive than relying on a specific tool on the author's end.
I also think that having a complete, hi-res fontset, even of only one typeface, would set a good standard on how to build patterns from other fonts when necessary (such as expected resolution of curves, standardized base size, how/when to use 2d primitives, etc.).
That would give part reviewers a good standing to say things like, "your letters could be improved; check out the official primitives for ideas on how to do this." You could even use an existing primitive as a base to model the same character in a different font, without having to start from scratch every time.