HI Olivier,
yes I agree it would be nice to include some hyphenation files in the
FOP distribution.
The author of the file would need to submit an ICLA, which would be an
official declaration that the copyright is handed over to Apache.
Thanks,
Chris
On 24/11/2021 21:36, Olivier Cailloux wrote:
Dear FOP developers,
As you know, hyphenation files are not distributed with FOP for
licencing reasons
(https://fop-dev.markmail.org/search/?q=lppl#query:lppl+page:1+mid:oov35g53cjfk4vcm+state:results
). I guess everybody agree that it would be good to have at least some
of these files licenced in a way that is appropriate for including them
back in the FOP trunk. Am I correct?
As a first attempt towards that goal, I have targeted the french
hyphenation file
(https://svn.lal.in2p3.fr/LCG/QWG/External/offo-hyphenation-fop-1.0/licenses.html#fr
). The file frhyph.tex mentions that it is “available for free and can
used and redistributed asis for free. Modified versions should have
another name.” So the only remaining problem was with the author of
french.lh (http://jeffreykingston.id.au/) as he had not given specific
licencing information, and the file french.lh is part of Lout, under
GPL. I just contacted him and he wrote to me that he modified only the
first part of the file (the rest as we know is what became the
frhyph.tex file), and that he is ready to place his modifications into
the public domain (here is the exact quote: “File french.lh was not
really made by me. There is a small amount of trivial stuff at the top
that I added, but when you get down to line 63 it is just a TeX
hyphenation file written by someone else. So that makes the license not
my business, I believe. The first 62 lines were made by me and I hereby
place them into the public domain.”)
I assume there would be some paper work and possibly a required check
that that author really has the copyright (and not, for example, the
company producing Lout)? But I thought I’d better contact you before
pursuing with this endeavor.
Please tell me if you would agree to integrate some of these
hyphenation files back in the main FOP software, assuming the licencing
issues can be solved; and if so, tell me what I should ask this author
or whether you want to contact him directly.
If this works, I consider also working towards including English and
Spanish files, so that FOP would have hyphenation for three popular
languages working out of the box and with non restrictive licencing.
.
