Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
Here's an update. After consulting with debian-legal, I emailed Bigelow and Holmes tonight to ask them to reconsider the license they have chosen so that they can be included in debian. If anyone is interested, I can post that email here. I've ITP'd the one latin ttf font I know of which is not packaged yet, dustismo, but it does not have very high quality hinting yet. I found this extensive list, of original font authors: http://jeff.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/originalfonts.html and have begun to email the to ask about licensing. If anyone is interested, I can post that email here also. I got to about Bakoma Fonts so if anyone wants to help look through these fonts and email the authors of the ones that look valuable, that would be great. Let me know who how far you get, so we dont duplicate any. I emailed the author of metatype (metatype.sourceforge.net) to ask him about the status of his font and software, but have not received a response yet. I emailed the maintainer of pfaedit, since the author's email is not listed on his webpage, but have not received any response yet. Apparently, pfaedit is being actively developed though. It seems like it is a good font editor, but it needs a lot of work. I also found ttfmod, http://pfaedit.sourceforge.net/TtfMod/, a program specifically for doing truetype hinting, but as the website says The Save and Save As commands may have problems. Let's pretend it's called ttfview for now I emailed the author to offer my help, but I haven't gotten a response yet. There was a changelog entry from June 2002. In case I didn't mention it before, there is this project: http://www.freesoftware.fsf.org/freefont/, which is not actually part of the fsf, but they are trying to make free truetype fonts. I will be ITP'ing and creating a ttf-latin meta package that depends on any useful ttf fonts I can find, including ttf-thryomanes. So, a lot of stuff is still pending, but I wanted to summarize my findings here. thanks for the input michael -- michael cardenas | lead software engineer | lindows.com | hyperpoem.net -a crumpled bed that never existed- like a poem in the dark-escaped back into Oblivion. - Allen Ginsberg pgpKBpc5SOFwa.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
On Wed, Aug 14, 2002 at 05:28:48PM -0700, Michael Cardenas wrote: ... 2001-12-21. Also, there is no license provided for the fonts. ... The fonts and the metatype software are gpl'ed. -- michael cardenas | lead software engineer | lindows.com | hyperpoem.net Being is what it is. - Jean-Paul Sartre pgp9NsY5Gz4Dt.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
On Wed, 14 Aug 2002, Michael Cardenas wrote: Do we really need a font author? How about just starting a project and learning how to make our own tt fonts? Font creation is kind of a science. I'm really no expert but when I spend some time in TeX and Metafont some years ago I've learned that it needs some knowledge and skills to create good looking fonts which look nice in every skaling and do not need a long time for rendering. Which is why it would be better for someone to donate their time and make some free as in speech fonts. I wonder if we could share this problem with the TeX community. Those people might have the same problem. Perhaps some Metafont to Truetype converter might do the trick??? Just an idea. Kind regards Andreas.
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 08:34:54AM +0200, Andreas Tille wrote: On Wed, 14 Aug 2002, Michael Cardenas wrote: Do we really need a font author? How about just starting a project and learning how to make our own tt fonts? Font creation is kind of a science. I'm really no expert but when I spend some time in TeX and Metafont some years ago I've learned that it needs some knowledge and skills to create good looking fonts which look nice in every skaling and do not need a long time for rendering. I realize this, but it also takes some knowledge and skill to create a compiler, or a web browser, or an os kernel, but we've done all that. I'm willing to invest the time, be it months or years, to try to create free high quality typography that is unencumbered by copyrights and patents. Which is why it would be better for someone to donate their time and make some free as in speech fonts. I wonder if we could share this problem with the TeX community. Those people might have the same problem. Perhaps some Metafont to Truetype converter might do the trick??? Just an idea. Metafont is a program that takes it's own input language and generates a truetype font, from what I understand. I've contacted some people, to see if anyone knows of any public domain, high quality true type fonts. Also pfaedit seems like it might be able to generate good truetype fonts, but it's hinting code needs some work. My main concern at this point is that it may be infeasible to generate high quality truetype fonts without using apple's patented truetype instructions (which is only a small subset of instructions, but they are commonly used in fonts). I've contacted one of the freetype authors to ask him what he thinks about this. Kind regards Andreas. thank you michael -- michael cardenas | lead software engineer | lindows.com | hyperpoem.net Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself. - Erich Fromm pgpab4nqz0MG9.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
Andreas Tille [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Which is why it would be better for someone to donate their time and make some free as in speech fonts. I wonder if we could share this problem with the TeX community. Those people might have the same problem. Perhaps some Metafont to Truetype converter might do the trick??? Just an idea. Have a look at the pktrace package (upstream just renamed it: http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/hanwen/mftrace). For LilyPond, we had the same problem, and designed our own music font: the feta font. We use mftrace to convert our metafont fonts to Type1 (pfa) fonts, needed for postscript and pdf. Greetings, Jan. -- Jan Nieuwenhuizen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter http://www.xs4all.nl/~jantien | http://www.lilypond.org
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
On Wed, Aug 14, 2002 at 06:48:06PM -0500, Scott Dier wrote: On Mon, 2002-08-12 at 20:01, Martin Sarsale wrote: Are there any 'opensource' font authors out there doing anthing interesting? Some GPL TT fonts: http://www.ntrnet.net/~jmknoble/fonts/README It also points to an application he used to create them. J -- Jesus Climent | Unix System Admin | Helsinki, Finland. http://www.HispaLinux.es/~data/ | data.pandacrew.org -- Please, encrypt mail address to me: GnuPG ID: 86946D69 FP: BB64 2339 1CAA 7064 E429 7E18 66FC 1D7F 8694 6D69 -- Registered Linux user #66350 Debian 3.0 Linux 2.4.19 Pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space / 'Cause there's bugger all down here on earth! --Man (Monty Python's The Meaning of Life) pgpYUHHDD8LpQ.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 09:19:21AM +0200, Jesus Climent wrote: On Wed, Aug 14, 2002 at 06:48:06PM -0500, Scott Dier wrote: Some GPL TT fonts: http://www.ntrnet.net/~jmknoble/fonts/README Forget about it. My mistake: no TT. J -- Jesus Climent | Unix System Admin | Helsinki, Finland. http://www.HispaLinux.es/~data/ | data.pandacrew.org -- Please, encrypt mail address to me: GnuPG ID: 86946D69 FP: BB64 2339 1CAA 7064 E429 7E18 66FC 1D7F 8694 6D69 -- Registered Linux user #66350 Debian 3.0 Linux 2.4.19 Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken. --Tyles Durden (Fight club) pgp2hzSwPPCcH.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 09:19:21AM +0200, Jesus Climent wrote: Are there any 'opensource' font authors out there doing anthing interesting? Some GPL TT fonts: http://www.ntrnet.net/~jmknoble/fonts/README It also points to an application he used to create them. These are not truetype fonts and do not have any anti-aliasing. They do not even work with Pango using the version of Xft provided in Debian. Keith Packard's website has Xft2 somewhere I think. Pango won't use a PCF font without it. What Jim's got is already packaged in Debian as xfonts-jmk. If Jim has TTF fonts I don't know about, I'd absolutely love to package them. The same goes for a utf-8 version of his existing fonts, which his website's been promising for a couple years now. ;) -- Joseph Carter [EMAIL PROTECTED] I swallowed your goldfish apt it has been said that redhat is the thing Marc Ewing wears on his head. pgpSOYnc8HIvD.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 12:10:30AM -0700, Michael Cardenas wrote: [..] I've contacted some people, to see if anyone knows of any public domain, high quality true type fonts. Also pfaedit seems like it might be able to generate good truetype fonts, but it's hinting code needs some work. There are some GPL truetype fonts http://www.gust.org.pl/fonty/index.html (page in Polish): Quasi Courier, Quasi Swiss and Quasi Swiss Condensed, Quasi Times, Quasi Bookman, Quasi Palatino and Quasi Chancery. They are taken mostly from Ghostscript distribution and converted to ttf. But these fonts need to be convert to WGL (or unicode) charsets. eloy -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] W ogle brak akcji jest. Nic si nie dzieje.
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 12:10:30AM -0700, Michael Cardenas wrote: My main concern at this point is that it may be infeasible to generate high quality truetype fonts without using apple's patented truetype instructions (which is only a small subset of instructions, but they are commonly used in fonts). I've contacted one of the freetype authors to ask him what he thinks about this. As far as I can tell, it's the rendering which is patented, not the font information. So you can create TT fonts with the hinting information, and for example freetype2 can use it if you enable the bytecode interpreter. Otherwise it will use its auto-hinter to generate plausible output. You might want to boycott the patented features, though, and design the fonts so that they will (only?) render nicely using the autohinter. As an alternative, would it be acceptable to simply point at Apple and laugh at their silly patents? I've been looking at one of them (US patent 5,155,805), and it's a patent on basic math. You take a point and two vectors, project one vector on the other, and add it to the point. That's ALL. But if the point is part of a glyph outline, then this operation is Intelecutal Prupperty of Apple. (For reference, the USPTO patent search engine is at http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/srchnum.htm Unfortunately, it doesn't generate useful urls for individual patents.) -- Richard Braakman I sense a disturbance in the force As though millions of voices cried out, and ran apt-get. (Anthony Towns about the Debian 3.0 release)
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
On Wed, Aug 14, 2002 at 05:28:48PM -0700, Michael Cardenas wrote: Do we really need a font author? How about just starting a project and learning how to make our own tt fonts? A good font is a work of art. Your suggestion can be paraphrased, how about just starting a project and learning how to make our own sistine chapel? You can certainly learn the mechanics, but to make a truely good font you need a talent for making fonts. -- Mike Stone
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
Michael Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Do we really need a font author? How about just starting a project and learning how to make our own tt fonts? A good font is a work of art. Your suggestion can be paraphrased, how about just starting a project and learning how to make our own sistine chapel? You can certainly learn the mechanics, but to make a truely good font you need a talent for making fonts. You won't find out if there's good enough talent hiding inside you until you try and learn and try again. The first glyphs you'll do (or the first fonts, ftm) will be total crap. But you certainly won't produce a fine font if you give up before trying. Jan. -- Jan Nieuwenhuizen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter http://www.xs4all.nl/~jantien | http://www.lilypond.org
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 12:10:08AM -0700, Michael Cardenas wrote: AT I wonder if we could share this problem with the TeX community. AT Those people might have the same problem. Perhaps some Metafont to AT Truetype converter might do the trick??? Just an idea. MC I've contacted some people, to see if anyone knows of any public MC domain, high quality true type fonts. Also pfaedit seems like it MC might be able to generate good truetype fonts, but it's hinting MC code needs some work. Actually, I don't see why we should use TrueType fonts instead of Type1 fonts. There is a set of excellent Type1 fonts from URW included in gsfonts package under GPL; there is an extension of these fonts with Cyrillic glyphs by Valek Filippov (ftp://ftp.gnome.ru/fonts/urw/README), also under GPL, and soon to be included into gsfonts; Valek also said that he successfully converted URW fonts to TrueType, using pfaedit btw. Can someone explain what is the problem with switching to Type1 altogether? -- Dmitry Borodaenko
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 03:36:42PM +0300, Dmitry Borodaenko wrote: Actually, I don't see why we should use TrueType fonts instead of Type1 fonts. There is a set of excellent Type1 fonts from URW included in gsfonts package under GPL; there is an extension of these fonts with Cyrillic glyphs by Valek Filippov (ftp://ftp.gnome.ru/fonts/urw/README), also under GPL, and soon to be included into gsfonts; Valek also said that he successfully converted URW fonts to TrueType, using pfaedit btw. But the pfaedit docs say that PfaEdit will degrade the appearance of most truetype fonts with the exception being those that are not hinted at all. Can someone explain what is the problem with switching to Type1 altogether? Portability. Ben -- nSLUG http://www.nslug.ns.ca [EMAIL PROTECTED] Debian http://www.debian.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ pgp key fingerprint = 7F DA 09 4B BA 2C 0D E0 1B B1 31 ED C6 A9 39 4F ] [ gpg key fingerprint = 395C F3A4 35D3 D247 1387 2D9E 5A94 F3CA 0B27 13C8 ]
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
15.08.2002 pisze Ben Armstrong ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): Can someone explain what is the problem with switching to Type1 altogether? Portability. Portability and the quality of the Type1 rasterizer in X, I'd say. Jubal -- [ Miros/law L Baran, baran-at-knm-org-pl, neg IQ, cert AI ] [ 0101010 is ] [ BOF2510053411, makabra.knm.org.pl/~baran/, alchemy pany ] [ The Answer ] A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain. -- Mark Twain
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 02:09:35PM +0200, Jan Nieuwenhuizen wrote: You won't find out if there's good enough talent hiding inside you until you try and learn and try again. The first glyphs you'll do (or the first fonts, ftm) will be total crap. But you certainly won't produce a fine font if you give up before trying. Fine, try it. But that's not the sort of thing you need a project for, and it's not the sort of thing you can rail against a bunch of software developers for not doing. -- Mike Stone
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 10:15:30AM -0300, Ben Armstrong wrote: BA But the pfaedit docs say that PfaEdit will degrade the appearance BA of most truetype fonts with the exception being those that are not BA hinted at all. Aha, that is why Valek had to manually adjust hinting. Well, this means that pfaedit developers need our help to solve this problem, doesn't it? DB Can someone explain what is the problem with switching to Type1 DB altogether? BA Portability. Can you elaborate? Which of Debian-supported platforms to not have Type1 fonts support, and why? As for quality of X Type1 rasterizer, I believe that it is a temporary problem. At least one Type1 renderer, gv, has no problems with visual quality, so this is not a fundamental flaw, just another challenge. -- Dmitry Borodaenko
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 05:39:13PM +0300, Dmitry Borodaenko wrote: BA Portability. Can you elaborate? Which of Debian-supported platforms to not have Type1 fonts support, and why? You are focusing on the wrong problem. Application designers choose TrueType for portability. SDL applications, for instance, may use libSDL-ttf to display TrueType fonts. We do not need to support platforms that don't have Type1 fonts. However, we do need to support applications written with support for platforms that don't have Type1 fonts. Ben -- nSLUG http://www.nslug.ns.ca [EMAIL PROTECTED] Debian http://www.debian.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ pgp key fingerprint = 7F DA 09 4B BA 2C 0D E0 1B B1 31 ED C6 A9 39 4F ] [ gpg key fingerprint = 395C F3A4 35D3 D247 1387 2D9E 5A94 F3CA 0B27 13C8 ]
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
Michael Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: until you try and learn and try again. The first glyphs you'll do (or the first fonts, ftm) will be total crap. But you certainly won't produce a fine font if you give up before trying. Fine, try it. I am trying, only with a music font, as a required side project for LilyPond. I'll leave text fonts to people writing text based applications, for now. But that's not the sort of thing you need a project for, FWIW, it has helped me a lot not doing this all by myself. If it weren't for others in the project (encouraging, criticizing, fun) I'd long given up. and it's not the sort of thing you can rail against a bunch of software developers for not doing. Well, who else is there? Some software developers are rather clever, critical and eager to learn. If you write a Free Software application that needs to display text, but you omit a good font, it's useless. Jan. -- Jan Nieuwenhuizen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter http://www.xs4all.nl/~jantien | http://www.lilypond.org
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
Jan Nieuwenhuizen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If you write a Free Software application that needs to display text, but you omit a good font, it's useless. So all text editors should come with their own font?! -- Alan Shutko [EMAIL PROTECTED] - In a variety of flavors! The best way to love your neighbor is when your boyfriend is away.
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 05:57:47PM +0200, Jan Nieuwenhuizen wrote: Michael Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: until you try and learn and try again. The first glyphs you'll do (or the first fonts, ftm) will be total crap. But you certainly won't produce a fine font if you give up before trying. Fine, try it. I am trying, only with a music font, as a required side project for LilyPond. I'll leave text fonts to people writing text based applications, for now. But that's not the sort of thing you need a project for, how about just a package? I imagine that if there was a project for free truetype fonts people would be interested. There's definitely interest in freetype, but I think we should stop relying on proprietary truetype fonts that don't fit the social contract and don't make me feel warm and fuzzy. FWIW, it has helped me a lot not doing this all by myself. If it weren't for others in the project (encouraging, criticizing, fun) I'd long given up. and it's not the sort of thing you can rail against a bunch of software developers for not doing. I'm not railing against anyone, just looking for some help on a big job. Well, who else is there? Some software developers are rather clever, critical and eager to learn. If you write a Free Software application yes they are. and hopefully some of them will want to help. and from what I understand, creating really high quality tt fonts means writing your own hinting instructions into the font. who better to do this than software developers? All we need is one person with a sense of design, and a few people to work out the technical details. So it seems that there are some gpl tt fonts here, http://www.gust.org.pl/fonty/index.html, as mentioned earlier in the thread, but I'm not sure because I can't read this page and babelfish doesn't do polish. Can someone confirm this? How about if I ITP something like free-truetype and include both these fonts, and the metatype fonts (there are two fonts they have that are tt and gpl, but they need some work on their hinting). Then as we find more, we can include them in the package. Also, the Bigelow and Holmes fonts in xfree86 have a clause in their license that they can't be modified, and I imagine that this is to preserve their artistic integrity. Maybe we can contact them (and consult debian-legal first) about adding a clause that they can be modified, but only if the name is changed, or only in a patch file. If they agree, we could add those to our growing list of free tt fonts. michael -- michael cardenas | lead software engineer | lindows.com | hyperpoem.net Are you seeking to know what is wrong with the world? All the disasters that have wrecked your world, came from your leaders' attempt to avoid the fact that A is A. - Ayn Rand pgpqJW1ALwgAQ.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
As for quality of X Type1 rasterizer, I believe that it is a temporary problem. At least one Type1 renderer, gv, has no problems with visual quality, so this is not a fundamental flaw, just another challenge. To get the quality, gv uses antialiasing, doesn't it? But X core protocol doesn't support antialiasing. RENDER extension does, but not all applications support RENDER.
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
On Mon, 2002-08-12 at 20:01, Martin Sarsale wrote: Since micro$oft stopped giving their true type fonts for free (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fontpack/default.htm), msttcorefonts is unusable :( It would be interesting to investigate either if a font author could be convinced to create some basic fonts for the free software movement or how much money it is to get a few (4-5?) basic scalable TT fonts and start a donation fund. I think the former is more likely, but the latter is worth looking into if the cost per font isn't absurd. (over $5k/font? I have no idea what the 'going rate' for unlimited distribution licenses are.) Of course, the latter really only gets us 'free' fonts as in beer, and most likely not in 'source' or 'modification' rights. Are there any 'opensource' font authors out there doing anthing interesting? -- Scott Dier [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.ringworld.org/
Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken
On Wed, Aug 14, 2002 at 06:48:06PM -0500, Scott Dier wrote: On Mon, 2002-08-12 at 20:01, Martin Sarsale wrote: Since micro$oft stopped giving their true type fonts for free (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fontpack/default.htm), msttcorefonts is unusable :( It would be interesting to investigate either if a font author could be convinced to create some basic fonts for the free software movement or Do we really need a font author? How about just starting a project and learning how to make our own tt fonts? how much money it is to get a few (4-5?) basic scalable TT fonts and start a donation fund. I think the former is more likely, but the latter is worth looking into if the cost per font isn't absurd. (over $5k/font? I have no idea what the 'going rate' for unlimited distribution licenses are.) Of course, the latter really only gets us 'free' fonts as in beer, and most likely not in 'source' or 'modification' rights. Which is why it would be better for someone to donate their time and make some free as in speech fonts. Are there any 'opensource' font authors out there doing anthing interesting? IANAFA, but I would be very interested in working with anyone else who would like to create a library of some free as in speech truetype fonts. I don't know all that much about fonts, I wrote a simple font parser for linux and macosX when I worked at Deneba Software, but that's about the extent of my knowledge. There seems to be a genuine need here and I imagine that if someone started a project and it got some momentum, some font author somewhere might help out. From a simple google search: http://www.google.com/search?hl=enlr=ie=UTF-8oe=UTF-8q=open+source+font+creation+software I found this page: http://jeff.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/editors.html which lists these two items of note: http://metatype.sourceforge.net/ - Free TrueType Fonts - this page has truetype fonts that are downloadable, but the project seems like it's not being maintained. the last, and only release was on 2001-12-21. Also, there is no license provided for the fonts. and http://pfaedit.sourceforge.net/ - A postscript font editor that lets you create your own postscript, truetype, opentype, cid-keyed and bitmap (bdf) fonts, or edit existing ones. which is already in the archive, but might allow someone to start creating some fonts. Maybe we need to develop some free tools that allow easier truetype font creation. -- michael cardenas | lead software engineer | lindows.com | hyperpoem.net Being is what it is. - Jean-Paul Sartre pgp9QlMk2s8ko.pgp Description: PGP signature
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