So, this is mainly for fun, I'm poking around and trying to find my way inside a few fonts and i have a few questions i'd reeally appreciate some help on if anyone has done this kind of stuff.

cmap table

The fonts i am testing with contain several cmap subtables of different formats. I can read them, but i don't understand which i should be using. ie. what is the strategy for choosing the most appropriate subtable? Does this even make sense?

glyf table

This is really making my head hurt. I'm going by what is on here. Looking at the second table on that page.. I've got 'n' endPtsOfContours, 'n' instructions and 'n' flags but it is not clear to me if i have the same number of flags as contours (i know how many contours i have). Then, to make matters worse..(fun!) i have an array of xCoords and an array of yCoords. These arrays seem to be of indeterminate length and may contain data of either BYTE or SHORT but we are not going to tell you which..

Thanks to anyone willing to shed some light.