Bug#776273: [Pkg-fonts-devel] Bug#776273: Bug#776273: Bug#776273: [googlefonts-discuss] sfd files for Play font

[Fabian Greffrath]

Am Samstag, den 03.10.2015, 11:57 +0200 schrieb Paul Wise:
> According to the Debian copyright information, there is no RFN
> (reserved font name) so I don't think so.

Erm, yes, stupid example. I should have checked the license, sorry.

 - Fabian

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Bug#776273: [Pkg-fonts-devel] Bug#776273: Bug#776273: [googlefonts-discuss] sfd files for Play font

[Paul Wise]

On Sat, Oct 3, 2015 at 10:26 AM, Fabian Greffrath wrote:
> Am Freitag, den 02.10.2015, 07:27 -0600 schrieb Dave Crossland:
>> The official name is the rfn name; that's why the maintainer reserved
>> the name. The distros need to rename or get permission. Same as
>> Firefox.
>
> So, I am currently rebuilding the Cantarell fonts from the provided
> .sfd sources for the fonts-cantarell Debian package without renaming
> the font. Am I thus violating its license?

According to the Debian copyright information, there is no RFN
(reserved font name) so I don't think so.

http://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs/main/f/fonts-cantarell/unstable_copyright

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

Bug#776273: [Pkg-fonts-devel] Bug#776273: Bug#776273: [googlefonts-discuss] sfd files for Play font

[Dave Crossland]

On 3 October 2015 at 03:57, Paul Wise  wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 3, 2015 at 10:26 AM, Fabian Greffrath wrote:
> > Am Freitag, den 02.10.2015, 07:27 -0600 schrieb Dave Crossland:
> >> The official name is the rfn name; that's why the maintainer reserved
> >> the name. The distros need to rename or get permission. Same as
> >> Firefox.
> >
> > So, I am currently rebuilding the Cantarell fonts from the provided
> > .sfd sources for the fonts-cantarell Debian package without renaming
> > the font. Am I thus violating its license?
>
> According to the Debian copyright information, there is no RFN
> (reserved font name) so I don't think so.
>
>
> http://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs/main/f/fonts-cantarell/unstable_copyright


Correct; I don't think RFN is a good idea; I think trademarks is sufficient
for those who want name control.

There are essentially 2 versions of the OFL, with and without RFN.

Bug#776273: [Pkg-fonts-devel] Bug#776273: [googlefonts-discuss] sfd files for Play font

[Fabian Greffrath]

Am Freitag, den 02.10.2015, 07:27 -0600 schrieb Dave Crossland:
> The official name is the rfn name; that's why the maintainer reserved
> the name. The distros need to rename or get permission. Same as
> Firefox.

So, I am currently rebuilding the Cantarell fonts from the provided
.sfd sources for the fonts-cantarell Debian package without renaming
the font. Am I thus violating its license?

 - Fabian


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Bug#776273: [Pkg-fonts-devel] Bug#776273: [googlefonts-discuss] sfd files for Play font

[Dave Crossland]

A format conversion is listed explicitly in the ofl as modification
triggering rfn permission / renaming, and converting source to binary is a
kind of format change
On Oct 2, 2015 6:02 AM, "Norbert Preining"  wrote:

> > What is the relationship between the googlefonts repos and the google
> > fonts repo? It seems a bit weird to have two places for the same stuff.
>
> Looking at the repos, the google fonts repo contains the built, ie
> ready made files, while the googlefonts repo the sources.
>
> Not that this is an explanation - but just for understanding what is where.
>
> > > BTW I believe that Debian must rename all OFL-RFN fonts (just as with
> > > Firefox.)
>
> Why? If the fonts are taken as is it seems to be fine, I don't se
> any need for name change. The RFN clause is about *changed* fonts,
> as far as I remember.
>
> Norbert
>
> 
> PREINING, Norbert   http://www.preining.info
> JAIST, Japan TeX Live & Debian Developer
> GPG: 0x860CDC13   fp: F7D8 A928 26E3 16A1 9FA0  ACF0 6CAC A448 860C DC13
> 
>

Bug#776273: [Pkg-fonts-devel] Bug#776273: [googlefonts-discuss] sfd files for Play font

[Norbert Preining]

On Fri, 02 Oct 2015, Dave Crossland wrote:
> A format conversion is listed explicitly in the ofl as modification
> triggering rfn permission / renaming, and converting source to binary is a
> kind of format change

Then what about shipping the ttf/otf as distributed?

Why do we Debian people always have to shoot ourselves in the knee?

Norbert


PREINING, Norbert   http://www.preining.info
JAIST, Japan TeX Live & Debian Developer
GPG: 0x860CDC13   fp: F7D8 A928 26E3 16A1 9FA0  ACF0 6CAC A448 860C DC13

Bug#776273: [Pkg-fonts-devel] Bug#776273: [googlefonts-discuss] sfd files for Play font

[Dave Crossland]

On Oct 2, 2015 7:32 AM, "Norbert Preining"  wrote:
>
> On Fri, 02 Oct 2015, Dave Crossland wrote:
> > A format conversion is listed explicitly in the ofl as modification
> > triggering rfn permission / renaming, and converting source to binary
is a
> > kind of format change
>
> Then what about shipping the ttf/otf as distributed?
>
> Why do we Debian people always have to shoot ourselves in the knee?

Firefox and rfn fonts are the same issue :)

> Norbert
>
> 
> PREINING, Norbert   http://www.preining.info
> JAIST, Japan TeX Live & Debian Developer
> GPG: 0x860CDC13   fp: F7D8 A928 26E3 16A1 9FA0  ACF0 6CAC A448 860C DC13
> 

Bug#776273: [googlefonts-discuss] sfd files for Play font

[Paul Wise]

On Fri, 2015-10-02 at 07:27 -0600, Dave Crossland wrote:

> Sources and binaries are not the same stuff.

They are two different forms of the same stuff.

One form is used by designers/developers to create new versions of the stuff.

The other form is an artefact that (usually) isn't altered and only used.

> I ask people to drop the rfn, but when they refuse, I get permission;
> for Google to use the rfn (and trademark.)
> However, for the source repos, this could be a good idea. I can ask
> about that.
...
> The official name is the rfn name; that's why the maintainer reserved
> the name. The distros need to rename or get permission. Same as
> Firefox.

It appears as though I wasn't clear enough in explaining my idea, so I
will try again. I get the impression that many of the fonts on Google
fonts are basically abandoned by their original designers and turned
over to Google to maintain. For such fonts with a RFN that the original
designers refuse to remove, Google could just rename their font and use
the new name instead. The license will still have an RFN but it will
not be the name of the font so people can basically ignore the RFN as
long as they don't rename the font back to the RFN. Obviously this
doesn't apply to all the fonts on Google fonts but probably many of
them.

> The font development community is not uniform, like the software
> development community is not uniform in choice of text editor, ide,
> distro, etc. It would be like asking everyone to use eclipse on
> fedora.

Generally one's choice of distro/editor/compiler etc is irrelevant for
the software development community, they are for the most part
interoperable as plain text and individual programming languages are
quite universal. One can modify C code with any text editor on any OS
and compile it for the most part with many different compilers.

> Ufo is not great as a source format, it lacks structures for a lot of
> basic source data types. If you use RoboFont it stores a lot in the
> private data areas, essentially forking the format. Glyphs and sfd
> formats are  richer.

Interesting. Does Glyphs support SFD or FontForge support Glyphs?

> Behdads FontTools isn't a compiler, and is now maintained by a
> community of mostly non google developers btw.
> The Google Roboto github repo has a ttf compiler branch under
> development, but it's far from ready.

Not sure what you mean by a font compiler, but FontTools can certainly
transform non-TTF forms of fonts to TTF.

> Fontforge is another libre compiler but it's not good quality, so I
> suggest avoiding it where possible.

What about it isn't good quality?
-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

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Bug#776273: [Pkg-fonts-devel] Bug#776273: [googlefonts-discuss] sfd files for Play font

[Paul Wise]

On Fri, 2015-10-02 at 07:07 -0600, Dave Crossland wrote:

> A format conversion is listed explicitly in the ofl as modification 
> triggering rfn permission / renaming, and converting source to binary 
> is a kind of format change

In addition, various historical things have meant that rebuilding a
font probably means you get a different font than the binary produced
by the designer. Things are slowly changing here with cross-software
source formats like UFO, inexpensive and open source font editors,
automated and open source build tools. Unfortunately there are still
plenty of designers working in the old way, some that ultimately
produce dumps of binary fonts that are under a FLOSS license but
without community development or even public source that a development
community could form around and continue.

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise




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Bug#776273: [googlefonts-discuss] sfd files for Play font

[Dave Crossland]

On Oct 2, 2015 4:49 AM, "Paul Wise"  wrote:
>
> On Wed, 2 Sep 2015 13:49:33 -0400 Dave Crossland wrote:
>
> > All the source files there not available elsewhere will resurface in
> > github.com/googlefonts/ soon :)
>
> Why there instead of the google fonts repository?
>
> https://github.com/google/fonts/
>
> What is the relationship between the googlefonts repos and the google
> fonts repo? It seems a bit weird to have two places for the same stuff.

Sources and binaries are not the same stuff.

> > Sadly the RFN is a problem here.
> ...
> > BTW I believe that Debian must rename all OFL-RFN fonts (just as with
> > Firefox.)
> Ugh.
>
>
> Probably best to do the renaming upstream.

I ask people to drop the rfn, but when they refuse, I get permission for
Google to use the rfn (and trademark.)

However, for the source repos, this could be a good idea. I can ask about
that.

> You'll still have to retain
> the OFL-RFN but the official name of the font will not be a RFN so
> Debian and other distros will be free to patch as needed.

The official name is the rfn name; that's why the maintainer reserved the
name. The distros need to rename or get permission. Same as Firefox.

> > The *-TTF.sfd files were the exact TTFs in SFD format, so generating
them
> > more or less directly should do that; the export would need a few
'default'
> > flags, like this:
> It would be nice if Google could standardise on font source formats and
> font build tools so that re-distributors would have an easier time.

The font development community is not uniform, like the software
development community is not uniform in choice of text editor, ide, distro,
etc. It would be like asking everyone to use eclipse on fedora.

I do suggest today using the afdko, but not all developers are familiar
with it. Most of the projects are not actively maintained and predate the
liberation of the fdk.

> I would suggest using UFO for the source format is probably best.

Ufo is not great as a source format, it lacks structures for a lot of basic
source data types. If you use RoboFont it stores a lot in the private data
areas, essentially forking the format. Glyphs and sfd formats are  richer.

> Not sure about build tools but I guess Python things such as Google's
> fonttools are probably the most portable across Win/Mac/Linux.

Behdads FontTools isn't a compiler, and is now maintained by a community of
mostly non google developers btw.

The Google Roboto github repo has a ttf compiler branch under development,
but it's far from ready.

Fontforge is another libre compiler but it's not good quality, so I suggest
avoiding it where possible.

> --
> bye,
> pabs
>
> https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

Bug#776273: [googlefonts-discuss] sfd files for Play font

[Paul Wise]

On Wed, 2 Sep 2015 13:49:33 -0400 Dave Crossland wrote:

> All the source files there not available elsewhere will resurface in
> github.com/googlefonts/ soon :)

Why there instead of the google fonts repository?

https://github.com/google/fonts/

What is the relationship between the googlefonts repos and the google
fonts repo? It seems a bit weird to have two places for the same stuff.
> Sadly the RFN is a problem here.
...
> BTW I believe that Debian must rename all OFL-RFN fonts (just as with
> Firefox.)
Ugh.


Probably best to do the renaming upstream. You'll still have to retain
the OFL-RFN but the official name of the font will not be a RFN so
Debian and other distros will be free to patch as needed.

> The *-TTF.sfd files were the exact TTFs in SFD format, so generating them
> more or less directly should do that; the export would need a few 'default'
> flags, like this:
It would be nice if Google could standardise on font source formats and
font build tools so that re-distributors would have an easier time.
I would suggest using UFO for the source format is probably best.
Not sure about build tools but I guess Python things such as Google's
fonttools are probably the most portable across Win/Mac/Linux.
-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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Bug#776273: [Pkg-fonts-devel] Bug#776273: [googlefonts-discuss] sfd files for Play font

[Norbert Preining]

> What is the relationship between the googlefonts repos and the google
> fonts repo? It seems a bit weird to have two places for the same stuff.

Looking at the repos, the google fonts repo contains the built, ie
ready made files, while the googlefonts repo the sources.

Not that this is an explanation - but just for understanding what is where.

> > BTW I believe that Debian must rename all OFL-RFN fonts (just as with
> > Firefox.)

Why? If the fonts are taken as is it seems to be fine, I don't se
any need for name change. The RFN clause is about *changed* fonts,
as far as I remember.

Norbert


PREINING, Norbert   http://www.preining.info
JAIST, Japan TeX Live & Debian Developer
GPG: 0x860CDC13   fp: F7D8 A928 26E3 16A1 9FA0  ACF0 6CAC A448 860C DC13

Bug#776273: [googlefonts-discuss] sfd files for Play font

[Dave Crossland]

On 2 October 2015 at 07:50, Paul Wise  wrote:

> On Fri, 2015-10-02 at 07:27 -0600, Dave Crossland wrote:
>
> > Sources and binaries are not the same stuff.
>
> They are two different forms of the same stuff.
>
> One form is used by designers/developers to create new versions of the
> stuff.
>
> The other form is an artefact that (usually) isn't altered and only used.


Right. Thus 1 repo for the binaries, and a repo per project for sources


> > I ask people to drop the rfn, but when they refuse, I get permission;
> > for Google to use the rfn (and trademark.)
> > However, for the source repos, this could be a good idea. I can ask
> > about that.
> ...
> > The official name is the rfn name; that's why the maintainer reserved
> > the name. The distros need to rename or get permission. Same as
> > Firefox.
>
> It appears as though I wasn't clear enough in explaining my idea, so I
> will try again. I get the impression that many of the fonts on Google
> fonts are basically abandoned by their original designers and turned
> over to Google to maintain. For such fonts with a RFN that the original
> designers refuse to remove, Google could just rename their font and use
> the new name instead. The license will still have an RFN but it will
> not be the name of the font so people can basically ignore the RFN as
> long as they don't rename the font back to the RFN. Obviously this
> doesn't apply to all the fonts on Google fonts but probably many of
> them.


I understand; where your supposition is true (like with the Play font) then
I agree, the RFN prevents further development under that name, and so must
be renamed. But for the majority of fonts, the RFN holder isn't abandoning
the project, they merely require their labour time to be paid.


> > The font development community is not uniform, like the software
> > development community is not uniform in choice of text editor, ide,
> > distro, etc. It would be like asking everyone to use eclipse on
> > fedora.
>
> Generally one's choice of distro/editor/compiler etc is irrelevant for
> the software development community, they are for the most part
> interoperable as plain text and individual programming languages are
> quite universal. One can modify C code with any text editor on any OS
> and compile it for the most part with many different compilers.


"Generally one's choice of font editor is irrelevant for the font
development community, they are for the most part interoperable as Bezier
outlines and OpenType features are quite universal. One can open and modify
CFF outlines with any font editor on any OS, and re-compile it for the most
part with many different compilers." No? :)


> > Ufo is not great as a source format, it lacks structures for a lot of
> > basic source data types. If you use RoboFont it stores a lot in the
> > private data areas, essentially forking the format. Glyphs and sfd
> > formats are  richer.
>
> Interesting. Does Glyphs support SFD or FontForge support Glyphs?


Neither.


> > Behdads FontTools isn't a compiler, and is now maintained by a
> > community of mostly non google developers btw.
> > The Google Roboto github repo has a ttf compiler branch under
> > development, but it's far from ready.
>
> Not sure what you mean by a font compiler, but FontTools can certainly
> transform non-TTF forms of fonts to TTF.


What non-TTF forms? :)


> > Fontforge is another libre compiler but it's not good quality, so I
> > suggest avoiding it where possible.
>
> What about it isn't good quality?


The ufo read/write support is buggy and incompatible with other
implementations including the reference implementation.

-- 
Cheers
Dave

Bug#776273: [googlefonts-discuss] sfd files for Play font

[Dave Crossland]

Hi

On 1 September 2015 at 04:55,  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm maintaining the Play font in Debian, which currently builds the Play
> font from the sfd sources (attached) which was present in the google code
> repository. And I've been trying to figure out a bug[0] where the sfd files
> generate a rather different font than the ttf files provided by google
> webfonts.
>
> First, I noticed that the sfd files are now gone with the move to GitHub,
> does this mean that the ttf files would be considered the canonical source
> for the font?
>

All the source files there not available elsewhere will resurface in
github.com/googlefonts/ soon :)


> Second, I have a few fixes that I've applied as a patch (attached) to the
> sfd files, to fix intersection, naming, and integral points, which still
> seems to be relevant for the current ttf files as well?
>

Sadly the RFN is a problem here.

The guy who did this, Jonas Hecksher, left the PlayTypes foundry, so it is
de facto abandoned.

And the RFN -
https://github.com/google/fonts/blob/master/ofl/play/OFL.txt#L2 - means how
to move forwards is tricky.

BTW I believe that Debian must rename all OFL-RFN fonts (just as with
Firefox.)

Another good reason why I strongly recommend against RFNs!


> Lastly, and the main point, is there any specifics on how to generate the
> ttf files from sfd sources to make sure they are as similar to the google
> web fonts ttf:s as possible?
>

The *-TTF.sfd files were the exact TTFs in SFD format, so generating them
more or less directly should do that; the export would need a few 'default'
flags, like this:

https://github.com/ManufacturaInd/tinytypetools/blob/master/fontconvert/fontconvert#L131

-- 
Cheers
Dave