On Tue, Jun 01, 2004 at 06:04:32PM +0100, Mike Brodbelt wrote: > > I don't know the details for PostScript fonts, but TrueType fonts are > considered as small programs which, when executed with the correct font > "engine", draw the correct glyphs on the screen. While the glyph shapes > themselves can't be copyrighted, the "program" that is a ttf file (or > other type of font) can be, and the hinting alogrigthms are subject to > some patents in the US - see http://www.freetype.org/patents.html. As > PostScript is a language, I suspect the "program" is copyrighted, but > you may not have patent problems there. >
<snip> > > Yes, you can do this. You may still have to avoid infringing the > offending patents though :-(. So what exactly is a font? I thought a font was more like a data file. I thought the rendering of the font was done by the program. Also, what exactly is hinting? Is that not some technique to make a font look better? > > To be fair to Adobe, they took those 500 year old glyph shapes, and > turned them into a program that reproduces them on your screen. As you > point out yourself, this takes a fair amount of time, effort and skill, > so I think claiming copyright over their implementation is perfectly > reasonable. I find the people who patent incremental improvements to a > system, that use those patents as a roadblock to prevent the development > of competing implementations to be far more unpleasant. This is however > not a commentary on Apple - I do not know how they have behaved with > regard to these patents, nor do I know how significant the things they > have patents on are. > I see your point about Adobe. But they seem to charge extravagant fees. It costs around $170 just to buy a fount like Bookman. Even to have as little at 5 fonts for use would become too expensive except for professionals. > > AFAIK, it doesn't - that license applied only to that set of fonts. The > fact that they were enthusiastically adopted by Linux users, and now are > no longer available from Microsoft's own website suggests that MS rather > wish they hadn't let them out. I doubt we'll see any more with that license. That could be, though I just downloaded from MS's own site a package of true type fonts that inlucded book antiqua and several other nice fonts. I didn't see any restrictions on the page, and I don't think MS would let you download them if they put liscensing restrictions on them. But I could be wrong. > > There's no indication of license at that site, but it looks a bit > suspect to me.... > Yes, and this site looks suspicious to me as well. I don't think I can just dowload the fonts and provide them on sourceforge. If a font is a set of data (as opposed to a program), it seems in the interest of the open source community to develop some type of open font format. Perhaps a font could be expressed as an XML file, and it could then be processed to create different types of fonts, such as PS or TT. Or perhaps I am way off here. I noticed that the Verdana font was released under the open source liscense: web address: http://www.gnome.org/fonts/ But the company released it an a true-type form, which seems to come with some liscensing restrictions. The inventor of the text processor TeX created some very nice fonts--but these are in a format that FOP can't use. So it seems like we need some type of open foundry. I don't think such a foundry will pop up anytime soon. The artist types who would be best suited for creating fonts are probably not inclined towards computers. Paul -- ************************ *Paul Tremblay * [EMAIL PROTECTED] ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
