Re: [OpenFontLibrary] LGM 2011
Dave Crossland wrote: Hello Libre Font people, For the last few weeks there's been a discussion over on the CREATE list about LGM 2011. There are 3 proposals, in alphabetical order: Brasil http://create.freedesktop.org/wiki/Conference_2011_Brasil_Bid Canada http://create.freedesktop.org/wiki/Conference_2011_Montréal_Bid Vietnam http://create.freedesktop.org/wiki/Conference_2011_Vietnam_Bid Please read them, and reply to this on-list with your order of preference. I'll do that myself in a moment, so you can see what I hope you'll reply with :-) Vietnam, Brazil, Montréal (Even if you didn't attend previous conferences, are not planning to attend next year, your input is welcome :-) If you can spare the time, please also answer these questions: a1) YES/NO: Do you have enough information to decide LGM venues for 2011? a2) If no, please describe yes b1) Will you make it to Brasil if LGM is there in 2011? b2) Will you make it to Canada if LGM is there in 2011? b3) Will you make it to Vietnam if LGM is there in 2011? if I can get the time off I'll try to be there wherever it is. c1) Are you satisfied overall by the process to decide the venue on the wiki? (Explained at http://create.freedesktop.org/wiki/Conference_2011 if you haven't been following) the one thing I don't know is: who'll make the final decision? If it looks like most people want it to be in place X then there's no problem, but what if opinions are really divided and no consensus is reached? d1) What do you think of the bidding process? d2) Should we keep it as it is, a one-year process, or change to a two-year process? don't really have an opinion on this. I guess two years would be somewhat easier for the organizers. But if it were a two-year process already, would we have had the Vietnam and Brazil bids for 2011? d3) Do you have enough information to make a real choice? Please explain.
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Open Font Library v3: Drupal?
Dave Crossland wrote: I spoke to him on the phone yesterday for about an hour and a half about the OFLB and his ideas for a new version based on Drupal. Is Drupal really capable to be an OFLB site? I guess you can write numerous plugins for it, but how far can this go? But I confess I haven't looked really well at Drupal lately and may think of it too much as blog software with a few extras. I wonder if it's possible to go a little bit further and write the OFLB software from scratch, given that almost all of the functionality needs to be written anyway. Greetings Ben
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] hinting workflow
Eric Schrijver wrote: For now I agree with Dave that XgridFit would be the most logical format to use, since it is already an XML based format and already in use in the FOSS toolchain… But will Fontlab etc really support a whole new hinting language? I can't see them being bothered to go any further than supporting plain ttf instructions. I do think all this shows hinting is still a bit of a black art. Am I correct in thinking that most projects could at first get by using the automated hinting of the design programs? Or is that typographic blasphemy :) Well, you can get some results out of the FF autohinter. Question is just whether it'll produce anything good... You can improve it by editing the parameters for PS hinting, but if you're putting effort in that you can just as well put the effort in ttf hinting at once... What do you think? Fontforge could for example do automatic hinting at the same time it generates the (o/t)tf’s from the ufo. It actually has a setting to generate automatic hinting when generating a ttf/otf right now. Greetings Ben
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] workflow hints
On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 12:03 AM, Schrijver e...@authoritism.net wrote: The main reason why you would want to use UFO is that it is agnostic to the editor being used. And the main reason why you shouldn't work with UFO *at this moment* is that it doesn't support basic stuff like truetype hinting yet. I know it's coming up, but I remember that it was also coming up 3 years ago. Anyway, I'd love to use UFO myself, but it's just too soon right now. Greetings Ben
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] workflow hints
On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 3:53 AM, Peter Baker b.ta...@gmail.com wrote: Couple of quick points. First, the FontForge format has always been plain text. It works well with CVS, SVN, etc. Only if you cut out the unneeded bits like we do with DejaVu. If we would forget to run that script and commit a change to SVN we'd get something like a 2 MB patch. Anyway, FontForge's normalized SFD format is by far the best we've got for collaborative font development. It isn't really human-editable, but it contain everything--outlines, hints or instructions, OT features, kerning, etc. Second, UFO by contrast is woefully incomplete: it knows nothing about TrueType instructions, for example, or OpenType features. The slowness of its development is baffling to me, considering the importance of the things that are still missing. I flirted with it for a while but had to give it up. I should have read further down this thread before complaining on UFO myself :-) Strangely, the binary font formats remain very good for exchange. Both the major editors read them! You'd still lose a lot of metadata though, like OpenType rule names for which there's no room in the ttf file. And it's absolutely not suited for collaboration. Ben
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] hinting workflow
Schrijver wrote: I remember a conversation at lgm with Jan, Ben and Denis about how tricky it is to deal with hinting in a collaborative workflow (and when deploying to multiple platforms). I’m interested in hearing the experiences of the Déjà-Vu team in more detail. What issues did you run into? How did you solve them? Is the way Fontforge stores this hinting data satisfactory? (In that case it could be implemented in UFO in the way Erik describes). Current FontForge format in the sfd files is just the plaintext format you see when you open the edit hinting dialog inside FontForge. It used to be some binary format (basically each instruction translated to it's number in the specs), but I asked to change that since these unreadable binary blobs should be avoided, as it's not really patch friendly. Now, hinting of one glyph isn't really collaborative work: it's not enough work that you need more people to work on the same glyph. So the workflow for hinting is just that when someone wants to hint a glyph, he just writes the instructions in FF and tests it himself (usually someone else will test the hints as well). I've also been looking forward to see a graphical hinter being written, something which is available in windows (forgot the name of the program). In such a program you'd basically click points to add hinting, instead of writing them down, which can be cumbersome and error-prone. So if you'd have such a program you could make a different syntax for hinting, which would be more high-level compared to the raw instructions. But would such a high-level language be a good idea for the main UFO format? I don't think so. Because this high-level language would be too limited for prep or func tables (hinting instructions which don't belong to a glyph, but to the font as a whole), or if you want to do funky things like the U+F000 glyph in DejaVu Sans which shows the current pixel size. Anyway, I can't really tell, I've never really thought about the graphical hinter thoroughly. Might be a good opportunity now to do that once... Greetings Ben
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] OpenFontLibrary Digest, Vol 54, Issue 1
On 6/10/10, fontfree...@aol.com fontfree...@aol.com wrote: The reason for openfontlibrary.com being what it (was) is to encourage font developers to stop using the SIL Open Font License for their fonts. Certain people (such as Dave Crossland) believe strongly in the SIL Open Font License. Whatever changes are made to the domain pointing / hosting / etc... They will have to be determined through discourse. The Open Font Library community (and that's not just Dave Crossland) does believe strongly in the OFL, so why you're trying to use our name to encourage non-copyleft licenses goes beyond my comprehension. It's like starting a Linux distro and calling it Windows. It just doesn't make sense. Ben
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] OpenFontLibrary Digest, Vol 54, Issue 1
On 6/5/10, fontfree...@aol.com fontfree...@aol.com wrote: FontBasis is a proposed offshoot of openfontlibrary.org with the same basic goals, free open source license fonts, but with an anticopyleft requirement. openfontlibrary.com was setup to be an anticopyleft openfontlibrary. It is currently forwarding to openfontlibrary.org, but that may change. OK, so you have a strong opinion against copyleft. Fine by me, you're allowed to think whatever you want. But can't you see that using the name openfontlibrary for your spin-off version won't help us, nor yourself? You're only going to confuse everyone. Just think on how you'd communicate this to visitors who look for openfontlibrary.org and find themselves on openfontlibrary.com, or vice versa. Furthermore you keep mentioning openfontlibrary.com on this mailing list over and over again, blurring the lines between the two even more. And now you're (sort of) redirecting openfontlibrary.com to .org and you happily tell us that this may change in future. What, is this some plan to get users to bookmark the .com url and then redirecting them to fontbasis once one of your 140 Russians finishes your site? Just choose alright what you want to do with the .com domain. Use it yourself and stop directing to our .org (and stop behaving like you belong to the openfontlibrary.org community), or let us use the domain and hand it over to us (and we'll wish all the best with your project). Also. Someone please fire Dave. Now you're basically shooting yourself in the foot. If you ever want to make a point on a mailing list, then doing that by attacking the one person who does most of the work and without whom we maybe even wouldn't have an open font community today is a sure way to basically get everyone here against you. Why would you even say that? What has he done that we should fire him? Ben
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] droidfonts.com
Since when are we interested in the release of non-free commercial fonts? :-p I see nothing new on that page. It's just promoting the commercial variant of Droid... Ben On Tuesday 10 February 2009, Simos wrote: Ascender created a dedicated website on the Droid font family, http://www.droidfonts.com/ I copy some of the text of the website: The Droid fonts included with the Android SDK are distributed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. Ascender is working with Open Handset Alliance members and other partners to modify and customize the Droid fonts. Some of these new versions may be added to the Android SDK under the Apache License, while other versions will remain proprietary and offered by Ascender under a commercial license. In addition to custom versions of the Droid fonts, Ascender is developing Pro versions which will be available for purchase/download by creative professionals under an commercial font license. View the Ascender End User License Agreement for the Droid Pro Fonts. The Pro versions will be in the OpenType format with additional typographic features. The initial release has Old Style Figures, and more enhancements are planned for the future. New weights, such as Droid Sans Condensed, are also in development. If you have any questions regarding the font license or custom type development, please contact us. The Droid Pro fonts that Ascender is developing have the following additions: * Additional styles and weights * Character set extensions * Enhanced language support * Advanced OpenType typographic features Simos
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Ecofont (font with 'holes' so it saves on ink)
On Thursday 18 December 2008, Simos Xenitellis wrote: The inventive designing method of the Ecofont - ommitting spaces in each letter to decrease the black surface of the letter and thus save ink by printing - is intellectual property of SPRANQ creative communications, Utecht, The Netherlands. Imitation of this technique is prohibited.Use Ecofont and save ink!» wow, so you wouldn't even be allowed to make a derivative and continue the same style due to their intellectual property... although I seriously doubt they can claim any ip there, or I'll hereby claim intellectual property on using condensed styles to consume less space on a page for a text and thus saving printer ink *and* paper, and also on outlined font styles and light weighted ones also to save ink. Oh, and also on smaller font sizes. That said, I doubt this technique really works for normal running text print sizes. Greetings Ben
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Fonts on the new site
On Sunday 23 November 2008, Dave Crossland wrote: I think we have more than 1% of visitors using Mac OS X, which comes with Helvetica Neue as part of the OS - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fonts_in_Mac_OS_X ah ok, I forgot that it may have been one of the default fonts on Mac OS X. I thought the persons who have this font installed had to buy them at €50 per style :-) Ben
[OpenFontLibrary] Fonts on the new site
I have one issue with the CSS of the new OFLB site (http://openfontlibrary.fontly.org/openfontlibrary_files/skins/oflb-skin/css/style.css): font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, Helvetica Neue Light, Nimbus Sans, Helvetica, Arial; Does it make sense to start of with commercial and expensive fonts (of which I'm sure 99% of the visitors won't have anyway) on a Free font site? Ben
Re: [Openfontlibrary] design service
On Wednesday 05 November 2008, jeremy schorderet wrote: hello, i am jeremy. i am a graduating student in graphic design in ECAL/switzerland. i have a little experience in type design. i would like to participate in the free font project what kind of font is most needed? Why not a Comic Sans MS clone? You'll see your font popping up in the weirdest places :-D Ben ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] oflb.org and switching domains
On Tuesday 04 November 2008, Dave Crossland wrote: I suggest we make all the domains redirect to oflb.org and get that promoted as the main URL, then fewer new people will think to go to openfontlibrary.com. I personally don't understand why openfontlibrary.com is a good domain for public domain fonts only. Open always has been a word used for *all* OSS licenses. If the person insists on having an OFLB fork, he should consider moving to something like pdfontlibrary or whatever, since visitors will be disappointed if the most used open software licenses can't be used. Second issue, he's free to do with his domain since he owns it, but at least play it nice and don't give it the same name, look and logo as the true OFLB. And always have in big letters on the front page that it's not the same project. Ben ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] Font formats accepted by OFLB
On Saturday 25 October 2008, Ben Weiner wrote: Looks as though in the next OFLB site version we'll have to ask people to upload individual files. We'd certainly need to unpack archives if we allowed them, and ccHost currently cannot see inside tarballs, facts that together mean we're best avoiding them. I completely disagree with that, and it won't work anyway. You assume that fonts are always one file, or everything could be pushed into one file. If you look at DejaVu we have a *lot* more, like build files (Makefile, some scripts to process the fonts when building etc), more scripts that help in development, and other metadata files like changelogs, readme, status files etc. Other projects have for example Xgridfit files for their hinting, or other files that are used for building the fonts from source. If ccHost cannot handle zipped files, then too bad. Not allowing zip files to be uploaded would be a major defect of the site. Greetings Ben ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] New Open Source Font, Help Migrating
On Thursday 16 October 2008, Brendan Ferguson wrote: As for recommendations of the structure of the font tarball itsefl there's a template here: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~fonts/open-font-design-resources/foo-o pen-font-sources/files Will the font designer know what this is? I really don't. Is this some kind of a source file that is generally not released with the finished font? That list of files looks a bit too much IMHO... It's much easier than that: you could have a README and a LICENSE file, and depending on whether he's actively working on it also NEWS or CHANGELOG. Most of the other files are just for building the fonts from source files. So I don't think they really apply to Miraculus, unless you get the real source files of course. Ben ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] openfontlibrary.org live
On Τρίτη 10 Ιούλιος 2007, Daniel Glassey wrote: The wiki is being hit badly by spam. Almost all the changes since 30th June have been wiki spam - all except 1 removing spam. The majority of the 'users' on the wiki look like spammers. I was trying to remove some spam and replace it with the last sane version of the pages (tried RoadMap page to start with), but I get this error message when saving the page: The requested URL could not be retrieved While trying to retrieve the URL: http://www.openfontlibrary.org/wiki/index.php? The following error was encountered: Zero Sized Reply Squid did not receive any data for this request. so I guess something isn't setup properly... But please remove those spam bots from the user list as well :-) Greetings Ben ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
