Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Libre Graphics Meeting 2014: Call For Paper
Hi, Dave! I just submitted a proposal for a 20 minute presentation for the upcoming Libre Graphics Meeting on the development of my Tai Tham font. I think there is a fairly interesting story that is being driven by the synergies of unmet needs and unfolding at the intersection of technology and design. There is a lot of interest in Southeast Asia and internationally to preserve and make palm leaf manuscripts available to scholars and the wider public online. Collaborations between organizations in the West and in Southeast Asia are already making palm leaf manuscripts available online (e.g.: l'École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) in France and Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre (SAC) in Bangkok; and also the National Library of Laos along with the University of Passau and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Germany) --- but at the same time high-quality Unicode-based Tai Tham fonts and input methods are not yet available. Of course I'm working on a Tai Tham font; and Theppitak Karoonboonyanan in Thailand is working on Tai Tham input methods that will automatically perform normalisation of the input sequence (normalisation issues could easily be a whole talk by itself!). On my end, working on a Tai Tham font, collaboration with the HarfBuzz OpenType layout engine community is proving critical to getting things done. I don't know if the LibreGraphics folks are interested, but just thought I'd let you know. I'm now making good progress on some of the technical OpenType hurdles in Hariphunchai. Hopefully I will be submitting an invoice to Google quite soon :-) Best Wishes -- Ed On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 2:28 PM, Dave Crossland wrote: > Hi! > > http://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2014/?p=199 > > The Call for Participation has now been published! > > For this year we are especially interested in presentations that > showcase how the gap between technical and design development can be > bridged. > > We are looking for: > > In-depth presentations on Libre Graphics technologies > Showcases of excellent work made using Libre Graphics tools > New projects in this area to meet the wider community > Reports, use-cases, best practices > New emerging media; breaking free from analog constraints > Well articulated ideas for future approaches, tools and standards > > Available formats are: > > Lightning talk (10 minutes, selected at the event unconference style) > Presentations (20 minutes extendable to 40 minutes) > Entry for State of the Libre Graphics Union (1-2 slides) > Workshops (2 hours or more) > Birds Of a Feather (BOF), discussion meetings or Hackathons (2 hrs or more) > > The 2014 Libre Graphics Meeting will be held April 2 – 5 in Leipzig, > Germany at Universität Leipzig. > > Deadline for submissions: 15 January 2014 > > Selection notifications by: 25 January 2014 at the latest. > > http://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2014/?page_id=165 > > > The Libre Graphics Meeting 2014 will take place 2. – 5. April 2014 in > Leipzig, Germany. > This yearly event is an occasion for projects and individual > contributors/artists from all over the world to work together, to > share experiences and to hear about new ideas. > > By Libre Graphics we mean Free, Libre and Open Source tools for > design, illustration, photography, typography, art, graphics, page > layout, publishing, cartography, animation, video, interactive media, > generative graphics and visual live-coding. The Libre Graphics Meeting > is not just about software, but extends to standards, file formats and > actual use of these in creative work. > We are looking for: > > In-depth presentations on Libre Graphics technologies > Showcases of excellent work made using Libre Graphics tools > New projects in this area to meet the wider community > Reports, use-cases, best practices > New emerging media; breaking free from analog constraints > Well articulated ideas for future approaches, tools and standards > > Available formats (including questions): > > Lightning talk (10 minutes, selected at the event unconference style) > Presentations (20 minutes extendable to 40 minutes) > Entry for State of the Libre Graphics Union (1-2 slides) > Workshops (2 hours or more) > Birds Of a Feather (BOF), discussion meetings or Hackathons (2 hrs or more) > > State of the Libre Graphics Union: > We will kick off this year’s event with a joint session that sums up > all things that have happened in our wide landscape over the last > year. Instead of slots in the schedule for general updates on each and > every libre graphics project, we invite you to submit a maximum of two > slides, show-casing new abilities and/or text enumerating the leaps > forward that your project made. > > Special focus: > For the 2014 edition of LGM, we are specifically interested in > presentations that showcase how the gap between technical and design > development can be bridged. We are looking for contributions on > computational and generative media; examples of projects where d
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Libre Graphics Magazine Issue 2.1
Sounds cool Dave! But the article says the submission deadline is October 1. Which I believe has past. Unless I am living in a time warp? On 10/18/12, Dave Crossland wrote: > Hi! > > I hope that people interested in libre licensed non-latin fonts might > consider working with me on a short article - or perhaps a pretty > 'poster' design that shows off their favorite libre font - for the > next issue of Libre Graphics Magazine :-) > > http://libregraphicsmag.com/2012/05/localisationinternationalization-issue-2-1-call-for-submissions/ > > Cheers, > Dave >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Inkscape-FontForge Extension
Hi, Dave! Thanks for posting - this looks very interesting. Usually around the holidays I can find a bit more time to work on special projects, and so I am now gearing up and excited to get back to work on Hariphunchai. Maybe I will try out this new Fontforge extension in the process! Best Wishes - Ed On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 1:02 PM, Dave Crossland wrote: > Hi > > Felipe has been working on a simple Inkscape extension to make it > easier to go from Inkscape to FontForge: > > > http://understandingfonts.com/blog/2011/11/typography-extensions-in-inkscape-0-49/ > > Your suggestions about what to do next for this project are welcome :-) > > -- > Cheers > Dave >
[OpenFontLibrary] Fwd: Using Javascript to Detect Script Support in a Browser
I sent the following to the Unicode mailing list. People on this list might have some ideas too, so I am forwarding it here as well: -- Forwarded message -- From: Ed Trager Date: Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 2:13 PM Subject: Using Javascript to Detect Script Support in a Browser To: Unicode Mailing List Hi Unicoders, Suppose that we write Unicode text in a web page that we create. We are worried that our viewers' computers lack a font for proper display of the script in which our text is written. Obviously it will not be good if our users only see square boxes or question marks instead of the text that we want them to be able to see and read: □ ... <= Bad! :-( We want a solution to this problem. Until very recently, apparently the best we could do was to warn the user of the possibility of unrenderable text. For example Wikipedia, on pages related to Indic languages, says: “This article contains Indic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks or boxes, misplaced vowels or missing conjuncts instead of Indic text.” But now that “good” browsers support @font-face, we can envision a better solution: If the browser does not have a font for rendering a specific script, we can dynamically supply one. I have written some simple Javascript to detect whether a user's web browser can display Unicode text in a specific ISO 15924 script. Here's how it works, using Javascript: * Create two divs on the page but set the CSS opacity to zero so the user doesn't see them. * In one div, place a relatively narrow letter from the target script. For example, for Latin one might choose "i". * In the other div, place a relatively wider letter from the target script. For Latin, "w" is an obvious choice. * If the width of the two divs is identical, then the letters were rendered as square boxes or question marks. * Otherwise, if the widths differ, then the browser has found a system font capable of rendering the text. In the case of a negative result where the widths are the same, we can then dynamically add an @font-face rule to the page to download an appropriate font. I have an experimental web application that already does exactly this to support Tai Tham (Lanna) script. As Lanna is a fairly recent addition to Unicode, only a very few people will have a Lanna font available on their machines. Astute unicoders on this list will probably already have recognized one or more shortcomings of this method. This method works perfectly for most scripts, but of course it fails for monospaced scripts like Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Yi, and possibly some others like Phags Pa. For monospaced scripts, I tried doing this: * In the first div put U+FFFE. Every browser I tested rendered U+FFFE as a square box. * In the second div put a representative character from the script, such as "中" or "文" for Chinese. In theory, the U+FFFE will always be rendered as a box with a fixed width, and one would expect that there is a fairly good probability that the fixed width of any Chinese font on the machine will not be exactly the same as the width of the fallback square box. But in practice, based on my tests, this does not work. One problem is that Firefox's fallback square boxes contain the Unicode code point hex digits -- and these fallback square boxes can actually be of different widths depending on the hex codes contained therein. Also it might just happen that the fixed width of the Chinese glyph is exactly the same width as that of the fallback box used to render the U+FFFE. It would be very nice to come up with a reliable solution for scripts that are traditionally monospaced. Does anyone have any brilliant ideas? - Ed Trager
[OpenFontLibrary] Fontaine Updated
Fontaine r38 | edtrager | 2010-06-02 14:21:19 -0400 (Wed, 02 Jun 2010) | 1 line Committed patches from Nicolas Spalinger to: (1) add support for the Apache2 license (2) Detect deprecated STIX vs. newer OFL for the STIX fonts (3) added an DEBIAN_UBUNTU_INSTALL file - Ed
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Google Font Directory
I also have thought that by hosting the fonts, they will probably start tracking font popularity, if nothing else. It would be pretty interesting, both for consumers of fonts and font authors, to have actual data on the relative popularity of various fonts. On Sun, May 23, 2010 at 1:44 PM, Garrick Van Buren wrote: > I agree there are business reasons for Google hosting fonts, but I'm not as > confident about tying them to better targeted advertising. I think it's more > about them reducing licensing fees on their end for their own apps (think > Google Docs etc). > > http://garrickvanburen.com/archive/google-offering-droid-for-font-face-use > > > Is this helpful? > > --- > Garrick Van Buren > 612 325 9110 > garr...@kernest.com > --- > Kernest.com > Free, Subscription, and Web Native fonts. > --- > > On May 23, 2010, at 12:09 PM, Liam R E Quin wrote: > >> On Sun, 2010-05-23 at 10:58 +0200, Schrijver wrote: >>> nice. >>> Yet; if they’re open to font contributions, why don’t they just mirror the >>> catalogue of OFLBv2? >> >> By encouraging people to use an API, Google makes sure most people will >> refer to the fonts on their site, and this lets them add a cookie, and >> track visitors to more Web sites, helping them to learn more about >> people, and present them with better-targeted advertising. So there's a >> fairly clear (as I see it at least) business reason for them to do this. >> >> Liam >> >> -- >> Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/ >> Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/ >> Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org >> > >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Google Font Directory
Very nice, Dave! - Ed On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 2:15 PM, Dave Crossland wrote: > Hi, > > http://code.google.com/webfonts/family?family=Cantarell :-) > > http://code.google.com/apis/webfonts/docs/getting_started.html > > -- > Regards, > Dave >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Kernest’s Web Font Serving En gine – Fontue – Now Open Source
On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 8:15 PM, Barry Schwartz wrote: > Nicolas Spalinger skribis: >> I like the way you're not hiding the origin, license and other metadata >> of the libre/open fonts you include in your catalog (Ahem unlike others >> apparently: http://readableweb.com/typekit-and-copyright-fraud/ but they >> promised they will work on clarifying it..) > > More like blog fraud, if you ask me. :) But TypeKit did make the > mistake of writing language that sounds "legal", rather than > English. (The ISC license is the only I can think of that is written > in English, and for that you have to disregard the disclaimer, which > is written in Alpha Centauran.) > > TypeKit embeds my fonts, as a service to others; they should embed the > copyright string with the font, but it doesn't really matter, because > I do not require attribution when someone embeds my fonts. Some _do_ > require attribution for embedding (Jos Buivenga, for one), but I'm not > sure it's TypeKit who needs to do the attributing; rather the website > using the font. > > Personally, I think requiring attribution for the use of a text font > is somewhat like requiring a painter to follow the signature with a > note about what brand of paint, brushes, palettes, and easles were > used. > > People who are really interested in fonts often will know already who the font author is, and will make the effort to find out if they like the font. Other people don't care as much and so will most likely not pay much attention to the attribution even if it is present. So in the end analysis, it may not make that much difference whether attribution is given or not ...
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] OpenID = Let the spam roll in like crazy.
Hi, Dave and Everyone, Spammers have become a seriously problem for web sites of all stripes and sizes. Note especially that the big sites like Google, Yahoo, MySpace, and Facebook have tons of spam accounts because they are, by definition, sites that allow everyone to sign up for an account. Those sites have millions of valid users -- and a presumably a proportionate fraction of spam accounts too. So this just means we will have to carefully consider how to address this issue. As far as I remember, the "file upload" code that I had developed and handed over to Ben for the OFLB beta does some checks to see if the font files included in a zip package are really font files (as opposed to trojan files that happened to be named with ".TTF" or the like). In light of Fontfreedom's comment, it will be worthwhile to revisit that code and see whether additional rigor and vigilance is required before going live. This is certainly an important part of what we can do to avoid spammer activity. The fact that OpenId is attacked by spammers does not necessarily mean that OpenId is at fault or an inappropriate choice. I think most of us will agree that it is still worthwhile to use Google or Facebook services even though those sites suffer from orders of magnitude more spam accounts than smaller sites. So I'm personally not yet ready to discount the possible value of using OpenId as a login service. A further investigation of the merits --or lack thereof-- is required. Best - Ed On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 4:49 AM, Dave Crossland wrote: > On 9 March 2010 21:57, wrote: >> OpenID = Let the spam roll in like crazy. >> >> I've used it on my sites b4...I do drupal dev, and that's just it... > > Okay cool. How do you block spam? >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Phone conversation with Ed Trager
Hi, everyone, On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 9:18 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote: > On 3/8/10, Dave Crossland wrote: > Ed thinks about replacing ccHost with a custom webapp. >>> To set the record straight, like many of you I've been wondering all these months what the holdup was with the cchost prototype? I contributed a bunch of code to that, and naturally would like to see the fruits of my labor --as well as the fruits of the labors of so many others-- realized. So this puzzlement was really the genesis of my conversation with Dave. And my suspicion going into the conversation was: is cchost part of the problem? Also, I was thinking is cchost the right platform for what we want to do? So, I was thinking, let's explore an alternative pathway: What do we want to do? Write that down as an outline. If the most important parts of what we want to do are simple and straightforward, then let's just write a custom web app to do it. But note that such a custom web app would still capitalize on stuff that we already collectively know how to do well anyway: i.e., PHP with MySQL and, on the Javascript side, jQuery. Also, for the login and security aspects I was thinking about using OpenId (OpenId.net). Also, I've been working on a bunch of jQuery-based code for web applications in my day job, and have also been thinking of using OpenId for some web apps in my day job. So I was visualizing how I might be able to apply and reuse some of what I have been doing in my paid work toward the OFLB project. Now if Aiki is a really good solution to the problems, then I won't argue against it. But is it a really good solution or not? I don't yet know, because I only heard about it yesterday when talking with Dave, and I don't yet know anything else about it. In the end, I only argue for using the right tool(s) for the job. So that could be Aiki or something else. But it looks more and more like cchost was really not the right tool, and from what I understand, modifying and customizing cchost was very laborious and frought with bugs. >>> Ed suggests just talking about OFLB v2 again for the 4th time at LGM? >> Umm ... I wasn't even at LGM in the last couple of years ... >> Ed is offering to cut the code for this, so, don't be mean to him. :-) > > What's the point of being mean when I can be nasty? :) > It's OK, Alexandre, I'll take it if you agree to let me dish it out too :-) > Alexandre > - Ed
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] An index for OFL fonts
> > IIRC Dave's presentation of the features of the OFLB at the last LGM had > a nice php frontend with jquery and fontaine magic underneath to report > interactively on the coverage of a font, a font covering part of the > Turkish writing systems was used as an example I think. > That was something I wrote with the intention of it eventually being integrated into OFLB. More recently I have been thinking that it would be useful as a stand-alone service too. I plan to add it to my unifont.org site as soon as I have time to do so. Unfortunately, I've been uber busy the last few weeks with no down time at all, so this too will have to wait a bit ... -- Ed
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] OneClickOrgs beta - our environment is now ready
Hi, Dave, That sounds good. I would be happy to be on the board. LGM will be in Brussels: I'll have to work on things to make sure I can get there, but that would certainly be fun. Best - Ed On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 3:51 AM, Dave Crossland wrote: > Hi! > > Okay, I have been in contact with the good people at > http://www.oneclickor.gs/ about getting a light weight legal structure > set up for OFLB, and they are ready to take us on :-) > > To do this I need 5 people willing to be 'core members' who will sit > on the board of the group, and who will be at the LGM2010 in May next > year to have a face to face meeting. > > I'm guessing this would be: > > Ben Weiner > Ed Trager > Nicolas Spalinger > Jon Phillips > Alexandre Prokoudine > > When we agree on this, I'll put in the names and email details of the > founding members of the legal organisation, an agenda will be created > that allows for a meeting to occur in the real world. Once that > meeting has been held on the agreed date, I will then go back to the > website and finish off the founding of the official organisation. > > -- > Regards, > Dave >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Fontaine
Hi, Dwayne, OK, I added Venda (South Africa) orthography to Fontaine: == svn ci -m "Added Venda (South Africa) and Igbo Onwu (Nigeria) orthographies" Sendingtrunk/src/FontFace.cpp Adding trunk/src/orthographies/IgboOnwu.h Adding trunk/src/orthographies/Venda.h Sendingtrunk/src/orthographies/orthographies.h Transmitting file data Committed revision 34. == While I was at it, I added Igbo Onwu (Nigeria) to Fontaine also. I've been working on a Javascript-based Igbo keyboard, so that was easy to do -- Maybe I will make a Venda keyboard next? The idea of adding a "--orthography=XXX,YYY,ZZZ" option is a good one. I needed just that functionality yesterday in fact! Of course there already exist the "fontconfig" tools, ie.. "fc-list" -- but I don't suppose that Fontconfig includes Venda or other African orthographies? You could submit patches to fontconfig though. As for Fontaine, adding orthographies that are specific to individual languages (such as Venda and Igbo) as opposed to larger orthography groups (such as my "PanAfrican" group in Fontaine) does raise issues about the future design of Fontaine that I have not yet considered fully : The main issue is not to create endlessly long reports when those are not needed. I'll have to think about this more ... Best - Ed On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 9:20 AM, Dave Crossland wrote: > Hi Dwayne! > > 2009/8/28 Dwayne Bailey : >> Fontaine is a Wonderful Tool(TM) :) > > Thanks! Its all Ed Trager's hard work though! I expect you'll know his > website, unifont.org > > Ed, I met Dwayne at the Open Translation Tools 2007 conference in > Croatia and he works at www.translate.org.za who are famous for > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pootle among other good works to help > FOSS in South Africa :-) > >> I just completed a build and added Venda support. It works great and >> I've been checking South African coverage for free fonts. > > Wonderful - I hope you can submit your patch to Ed :-) > >> Do I send feature requests to you? > > Ed, is there a publish roadmap document that users can comment/add to? :-) > >> While the output is great I mostly >> want to be able to check that a font has support for South African >> languages. So the ability to limit the request to only report coverage >> for certain orthographies e.g. >> --orthography='Basic Latin;Venda;Afrikaans' >> That way I just see what I need to evaluate quickly. > > That seems like a good feature to add :-) > >> Did I say this was a great tool! When you said sponsor is that through >> your font business? > > Essentially Ed's development has been on a volunteer basis, and I've > been giving him donations from my business' expense account with money > I earned doing systems administration work. I haven't yet got a > business running around fonts, and I have some more family stuff to > take care of the next few months But I do plan to hit the font > stuff once I am free :-) > > Hope you are well and enjoying the winter/summer :-) > > Dave >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Contribute logos for permissive font licenses on OFLBv2
Hi, all, For what it is worth, here's my 2 cents opinion: => I like having the full acronym as text next to the logo. In this I believe I concur with Dave and Ben. => Because I liked the MIT logo with the dinosaur, I made up some quick-and-dirty samples for OFL and GPL that would match the MIT logo. => I created "color", "grayscale" and "black & white" alternates just to see what they would look like. My conclusions?: => I actually kind of like the color column. => The cartoonish version of the GNU head would need to have a few adjustments for better clarity at this small size. I've decided I really don't like the other GNU head (on the far right in the "black&white" column. => The dinosaur could also perhaps be put in color -- not sure what color would be appropriate? => The samples would need to be at the 71x30 size -- not sure if that would work or not? Image attached Best - Ed On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 6:57 AM, Ben Weiner wrote: > Hi > > Dave Crossland wrote: >> >> So do we have consensus on these icons with the full acronym as text next >> to it? >> > I support the idea. >> >> Only query I have remaining is if we keep all 3 as black or have different >> colors? >> > Yes, what happened to the colour idea? Was it seen as unnecessary? Ed's > orthography icons are also coloured so perhaps it is wise to avoid on the > license icons ... > > Ben > > -- > Ben Weiner | http://readingtype.org.uk/about/contact.html > > <>
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Updated Fontaine SVN Revision 30
Oops, I forgot to add it ... OK, it is there now (SVN revision 31). Sorry about that, but thanks for alerting me! Best - Ed On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 3:09 PM, Aaron Spaulding wrote: > It's not compiling for me. I'm getting: "XFree86.h: No such file or > directory". Doesn't look like it in the repo. >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Updated Fontaine SVN Revision 30 :: Need More Fonts for Testing
Hi, Everyone, As a follow up to my previous message, please note that it would help me greatly if I had access to a few additional font file formats that I have not yet been able to test because I don't have any of these kinds of fonts and don't know where to get them either: (1) CID fonts (2) Postscript Type42 fonts (3) "Multiple Master" fonts (4) "PFR" fonts (5) Any fonts (Type1 or otherwise) that are known without a doubt to be licensed under X11/MIT license *and* actually have a copyright notice which *explicitely* states that fact. If anyone has some of these fonts and would like to lend me them for testing, please let me know. Thanks! -- Ed -- Forwarded message -- From: Ed Trager Date: Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 2:30 PM Subject: Updated Fontaine SVN Revision 30 To: Open Font Library Hi, everyone, As a result of recent discussions on this list in the last few days, I decided to investigate Fontaine's handling and support of different font file formats in a more systematic fashion. In addition to filling in some gaps in support for Type1 Postscript fonts, I also did extensive testing on Apple OS X for the first time. The result of this work is that Fontaine SVN revision 30 is now available with the following improvements: (1) Improved support for Type1 (Postscript) fonts. (2) Extensively tested to verify that Fontaine correctly handles the following font file types and formats: TrueType (TTF, OTF, CFF, Apple dfont and AppleDouble-encoded TrueType/OpenType), Type1 (.pfa, .pfb), and X11 bitmap (.pcf.gz). (3) Added XFree86 license detection. (4) Revised X11/MIT and IPA license detection. (5) Added a small addition to one of the CMakeLists.txt" (6) Improved handling of license URLs === Getting Fontaine === Fontaine is now a project on sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/fontaine/ Anyone may obtain the source code for Fontaine from the SVN repository: svn co https://fontaine.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/fontaine === Building Fontaine === Fontaine uses the cross-platform cmake-based build system: cd fontaine/trunk cmake . make su -c "make install" or sudo make install
[OpenFontLibrary] Updated Fontaine SVN Revision 30
Hi, everyone, As a result of recent discussions on this list in the last few days, I decided to investigate Fontaine's handling and support of different font file formats in a more systematic fashion. In addition to filling in some gaps in support for Type1 Postscript fonts, I also did extensive testing on Apple OS X for the first time. The result of this work is that Fontaine SVN revision 30 is now available with the following improvements: (1) Improved support for Type1 (Postscript) fonts. (2) Extensively tested to verify that Fontaine correctly handles the following font file types and formats: TrueType (TTF, OTF, CFF, Apple dfont and AppleDouble-encoded TrueType/OpenType), Type1 (.pfa, .pfb), and X11 bitmap (.pcf.gz). (3) Added XFree86 license detection. (4) Revised X11/MIT and IPA license detection. (5) Added a small addition to one of the CMakeLists.txt" (6) Improved handling of license URLs === Getting Fontaine === Fontaine is now a project on sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/fontaine/ Anyone may obtain the source code for Fontaine from the SVN repository: svn co https://fontaine.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/fontaine === Building Fontaine === Fontaine uses the cross-platform cmake-based build system: cd fontaine/trunk cmake . make su -c "make install" or sudo make install
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What licenses do we accept?
>> Fontaine revision 29 now adds GUST font license detection too ... > > Thanks! > > Where do I get that revision? ;-) > ~> svn co https://fontaine.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/fontaine Or, if you already have a source code tree: ~> svn update - Ed
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What licenses do we accept?
OK, everyone, Fontaine revision 29 now adds GUST font license detection too ... Best - Ed 2009/7/15 Nicolas Mailhot : > Le mercredi 15 juillet 2009 à 15:12 -0400, Ed Trager a écrit : > >> > - GUST >> >> *NOT* ADDED. Are there any GUST fonts in TTF or OTF format? > > Lots > http://www.gust.org.pl/projects/e-foundry/tex-gyre/whole > > Though unfortunately they derived GPL ghostscript fonts and slapped > their own license on the result (and seem decided to go on at all costs) > > IIRC some other GUST fonts are also released in OpenType format, and > should not be problematic, for example > > http://nowacki.strefa.pl/torunska-e.html > http://nowacki.strefa.pl/poltawski-e.html > http://nowacki.strefa.pl/kurier.html > > It's such a pity the GUST guys seem to have no legal sense, their font > work is great > > > -- > Nicolas Mailhot >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What licenses do we accept?
Hi, Khaled, > > I'm not sure in what sense using Type1 fonts would screw up the rest of > the system. TeX fonts has always been a different territory, and aren't > supposed to integrate with the rest of the system anyway. Technically > speaking, TeX is frozen and will never get updated, Even though new > TeX-based engines support OpenType (XeTeX and LuaTeX), there still > people who aren't willing to switch, for valid reasons, and will keep > use those "obsolete" formates. So, distros have either to support these > use scenarios or screw up their users, it is up to them. > > And as Type1 is a valid font formate (I just checked, and my GTK+ apps > can use it) and I don't see a point for OFLB not to support it. > OFLB may well support Type1. However at the moment there is an implementation detail which is: Fontaine does not yet fully investigate all aspects of a Type1 font. For example, Fontaine currently only investigates the Copyright and License fields in TrueType and OTF fonts, but not in Type1 Postscript fonts. Fontaine, which uses FreeType2, can of course be improved to do a better job with Type1 fonts. I just need to have the time to do the coding. So that's why today I was just looking for TTF or OTF fonts for testing ... Best Wishes -- Ed > Regards, > Khaled > > -- > Khaled Hosny > Arabic localiser and member of Arabeyes.org team > Free font developer > > -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) > > iEYEARECAAYFAkpeNP4ACgkQRoqITGOuyPJWzACfa2JlYJuT12ixJcRJjTT1uMge > 3LQAni2qCtTN7/KFZUKnqZMS7qsMUgOp > =qTKh > -END PGP SIGNATURE- > >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What licenses do we accept?
Hi, Nicolas, > Hi Ed, > > In the project-and-organisation-specific deprecated category we may want > to add detection for the following licensing models: > - Utopia ADDED TO FONTAINE. TESTED USING HEURISTICA FONT FAMILY. > - Baekmuk *NOT* ADDED. BAEKMUK FONT FILES DO NOT MENTION THE LICENSE ... > - GUST *NOT* ADDED. Are there any GUST fonts in TTF or OTF format? > - Hershey *NOT* ADDED. Are there any Hershey-license fonts in TTF or OTF format? > - Lucida *NOT* ADDED. Are there any Lucida-license fonts in TTF or OTF format? > - Stix ADDED, BUT MARKED AS DEPRECATED SINCE STIX HAS THEORETICALLY MOVED TO OFL ... > - Wadalab *NOT* ADDED. Wadalab fonts don't appear to be in TTF or OTF formats ... > - mplus ADDED. > - Mincho *NOT* ADDED. A lot of Japanese fonts are "Mincho" -- no clue which font project or license this refers to? > I'll provide the patch for MIT. ADDED. But not yet tested ... need an MIT-licensed font in a TTF or OTF package ... WRT the short truncation of the Copyright field in the display produced by Fontaine: this was done because I was mainly thinking of displaying Fontaine's output in a summary tabular form on web pages. Sometimes the copyright field extends for pages and pages. I didn't want that. Feel free to suggest an appropriate length other than my admittedly very short 70 character length. What do folks feel would be appropriate? Note that internally Fontaine scans the entire copyright string, regardless of how long it may be. But it currently only prints a short snippet in the output report ... Best - Ed
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What licenses do we accept?
> Hi Ed, > > In the project-and-organisation-specific deprecated category we may want > to add detection for the following licensing models: > - Utopia > - Baekmuk ... Baekmuk font files also do not identify the license in any clear way ... :-( > - GUST > - Hershey > - Lucida > - Stix > - Wadalab > - mplus > - Mincho >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What licenses do we accept?
On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 12:34 PM, wrote: > >> >> The Yanone fonts have a similar problem: web page says "CC" (Generic >> CC) but the font header only says >> >> "Copyright (c) Yanone, 2005. All rights reserved." >> >> ... so the font file itself fails to identify a license as far as I can >> see. > > It's linked on the homepage and included in the zip :p > > I'd rather have it this way than the other (some metadata but no detached > license) > I would prefer to see both: (1) meta data in font files clearly identifies the license and (2) Separate text file called "license.txt" or "LICENSE.txt" or "LICENSE" in the downloaded package also clearly identifies the license ... In any case, if the license/copyright field in the font files themselves lack the information, then software like Fontaine can't make any automated determination . - Ed
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What licenses do we accept?
The Yanone fonts have a similar problem: web page says "CC" (Generic CC) but the font header only says "Copyright (c) Yanone, 2005. All rights reserved." ... so the font file itself fails to identify a license as far as I can see. On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 12:09 PM, wrote: > >> >> Hi, Nicolas et al., >> Do the Adobe-licensed-to-TeX Utopia fonts exist in a TrueType or OpenType packaging? >>> >>> Heuristica is a transformation to OpenType (CFF & TT) >>> ftp://ftp.dvo.ru/pub/Font/heuristica/ >>> >>> It's been relicensed to the OFL, which seemed compatible with the TUG >>> grant when we looked at it. > > > http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=452317 >> >> OK, I just checked in Fontaine SVN version no. 27 which now detects >> Adobe's license to TUG for the Utopia family. Tested using >> Heuristica. >> >> The license fields in the Heuristica font files indeed contain the >> original Abobe-TUG license wording, "Copyright (c) 1989, 1991 Adobe >> Systems Incorporated. All Rights ..." >> >> If this font is really and legitimately licensed under OFL, then >> shouldn't the license field just say OFL? > > Feel free to ask it of the font author:p > > > >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What licenses do we accept?
Hi, Nicolas et al., >> >> Do the Adobe-licensed-to-TeX Utopia fonts exist in a TrueType or >> OpenType packaging? > > Heuristica is a transformation to OpenType (CFF & TT) > ftp://ftp.dvo.ru/pub/Font/heuristica/ > > It's been relicensed to the OFL, which seemed compatible with the TUG > grant when we looked at it. > OK, I just checked in Fontaine SVN version no. 27 which now detects Adobe's license to TUG for the Utopia family. Tested using Heuristica. The license fields in the Heuristica font files indeed contain the original Abobe-TUG license wording, "Copyright (c) 1989, 1991 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights ..." If this font is really and legitimately licensed under OFL, then shouldn't the license field just say OFL? - Ed
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What licenses do we accept?
Hi, Nicolas (Mailhot), > Vollkorn > http://www.grafikfritze.de/?p=43 This appears to be a very nice font. The web page says its under a CC license -- but which one? In any case, the License field within the font itself only says "Copyright (c) FRiTZe, 2006. All rights reserved." So Fontaine can only conclude "Unknown or Proprietary License"! Does anyone know this font author? Perhaps someone could write to him, suggesting he fill in the Copyright/License fields directly in the font file itself. Also, we really need to know very specifically which CC license. "CC" by itself is almost useless, I think (I could be wrong ...) Best - Ed
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What licenses do we accept?
On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Nicolas Spalinger wrote: > Ed Trager wrote: >> Hi, Nicolas, >> >> (1) I'll work on chasing down the deprecated licenses you mention. >> This is straightforward to do. > > Great. > Do the Adobe-licensed-to-TeX Utopia fonts exist in a TrueType or OpenType packaging? Fontaine's current code looks only at the SFNT structures in TrueType/OpenType fonts. Would anyone produce a new or new derivative work in only the PS Type 1 format? I hope not ... - Ed
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What licenses do we accept?
Hi, Nicolas, (1) I'll work on chasing down the deprecated licenses you mention. This is straightforward to do. (2) The CC Licenses are actually the ones that I find most confusing ... Could someone provide me the names and links to actual fonts licensed under CC licenses so I can see what the authors have included in the Copyright and License fields? - Ed > Hi Ed, > > In the project-and-organisation-specific deprecated category we may want > to add detection for the following licensing models: > - Utopia > - Baekmuk > - GUST > - Hershey > - Lucida > - Stix > - Wadalab > - mplus > - Mincho > > > And a profile to detect any CC-licensed fonts to flag them up. > >> "template.h" provides a template for extending Fontaine to recognize >> additional licenses. > > I'll provide the patch for MIT. > >> Best - Ed > > Cheers, > > -- > Nicolas Spalinger, NRSI volunteer > Debian/Ubuntu font teams / OpenFontLibrary > http://planet.open-fonts.org > > >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] What licenses do we accept?
Hi, all, In reply to Dave's question, under the "src/licenses" subdirectory in Fontaine's code tree we find: ~/fontaine/trunk/src/licenses $ ls Aladdin.hGPL.h licenses.h template.h ArphicPublic.h GPLWithFontException.h Magenta.h UnknownLicense.h BitstreamVera.h IPA.h OFL.h Freeware.h LGPL.h PublicDomain.h "template.h" provides a template for extending Fontaine to recognize additional licenses. Best - Ed > Ed: please take a minute to confirm which licenses Fontaine recognises > at the moment :-) > > -- > Regards, > Dave >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Using genetic algorithms to create fonts
Hi, Aaron, I don't really know anything about genetic programming algorithms since I've never done that kind of work. But I guess there has to be a "fitness" criteria in there somewhere that determines whether the offspring live to reproduce or die. That fitness criteria clearly needs to be based on whether people can read the letters or not. So maybe some kind of voting system? More highly-ranked ones have more chances to "mate" and produce offspring, less highly-ranked ones die sooner with fewer offspring. Something like that ... Best - Ed On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 12:26 PM, Aaron Spaulding wrote: > Ed Trager wrote: >> An interesting idea, Aaron ... >> >> ... but I could not identify even one letter correctly, and the >> "offspring" were equally unidentifiable ... > > Yeah, thats the problem. I didn't want to bias the result, but I also > don't want it to take millions years. I'm thinking of pre-populating > the database, but I'm open for input. > >> Best - Ed > > -- > Aaron > sachimp.com > getCorkd.com > >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Using genetic algorithms to create fonts
An interesting idea, Aaron ... ... but I could not identify even one letter correctly, and the "offspring" were equally unidentifiable ... Best - Ed On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 2:19 PM, Aaron Spaulding wrote: > About a month ago I was thinking about what happen if fonts would be > able to adapt to the reader? If each person had a font would they > differ wildly? or would they be similar? > > I started working on a basic implementation of an adaptive font, it uses > a genetic algorithm, to select the best letters or numbers. > > http://code.sachimp.com/labs/genetic_font_editor/ > > -- > Aaron > sachimp.com > getCorkd.com > >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] theleagueofmoveabletype.com is switching to the Open Font License
That's great! - Ed On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 5:28 PM, Dave Crossland wrote: > Happy days :-) > > -- Forwarded message -- > From: The League of Moveable Type > Date: 2009/6/4 > Subject: Re: Please consider switching to the Open Font License > To: Dave Crossland > > Hello Dave, > > Caroline here, thanks for getting in touch. Actually, we are thinking > of switching to the SIL Open Font License, it's just a matter of > letting know our font contributors about the change. We agree, we > think the Open Font License will work better for the purposes of The > League. So we'll let you know when we've made the change. > > And thanks for the heads up! > -Caroline > > The League of Moveable Type > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Open Font Library Podcast: Dev Talk #1
Hi, everyone, On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 2:08 PM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: > On 06/03/2009 02:02 PM, Ben Weiner wrote: >> >> Hi, >> >> Behdad Esfahbod wrote: >>> >>> Ok, listening. It still slightly worries me that all the new code >>> being written is duplicating lots of code that is already out there... >> >> OK, well, please give us some more hints about which functionality we >> shouldn't be duplicating... ;-) > > "pcp?" The preview-generating tool. I want to see any missing features > added to pango-view instead. pcfp is currently a very simple tool for generating the previews. Currently, pcfp just generates a single line of typeset text as a preview. I mentioned in the recorded development conversation with Ben Weiner and Dave Crossland that I may want in the future to add options to pcfp to make it capable of producing a "waterfall" specimen, or a "drop caps" specimen. I'm sure people on this list can think of a gazillion possibly useful options beyond just these few. I will certainly take a look at pango-view and see what it does and what options are there, and see where it is best to make additions or modifications in the future. Note that while "pcfp" is currently used for generating the previews, most of my time was actually spent on creating the "FontPlayground" and "Key Curry" Javascript classes that drive the interactive web interface. pcfp was something I needed on the server side, so I wrote pcfp (and it didn't take much time to do that): I'm sure that pango-view or similar tools can be swapped in place of pcfp if it is generally agreed that a more versatile tool with a better array of options is needed in the future. > Fontaine also overlaps with fontconfig and > pango in huge parts. I'm not as convinced that fontaine overlaps so extensively with fontconfig. The way orthographies are grouped in fontaine is quite different than in fontconfig. The treatment of Japanese illustrates the difference well: Fontaine breaks up "Japanese" into a set of categories that are meaningful to Japanese people: Jinmeiyo, Joyo, and Kokuji represent different classes of Kanji, and then there is of course a separate group for kana (hiragana, katakana). For a typographer working to produce a Japanese font, being able to generate a report where things are organized into these groupings makes sense. Fontconfig on the other hand --correct me if I am wrong-- has a single grouping for "Japanese" orthography, which lumps all the Kanji and kana. This is just one example. There are differences in the approach fontaine takes for other orthographies as well. Overall, the general distinction is that fontaine uses orthographic-centric groupings that are intended to be most relevant to fonts and digital type design. As I understand it, fontconfig uses language-centric groupings. There is of course nothing wrong with fontconfig's approach -- or, for that matter, with Fontaine's approach. They simply serve different purposes. > I replied to that in another thread a couple montsh > back. Maybe if I find some time I hack something... > >>> Also, Ed talks about fontconfig being a mystery. If someone doesn't >>> understand some part of it, all they need to do is ask. I'll explain >>> until they understand :). > >> >> >> What happens if you get kidnapped or lose your internet connection? > > See, I write the code. Ed already contacted me and I told him how I think > this should be done. He didn't CC the list (he's not on the list?) I'm on the list -- I wasn't paying attention when I emailed Behdad the other day, so I forgot to reply all or CC the list ... > , so I > attach the relevant parts at the end of this message. > > Anyway, point being that, now he knows how things work, and he's much better > than me in writing. So he can write good docs! Same applies to everyone > else: ask, I'll make sure I answer, you can then write it in a legible form > :). Heh, heh, you are assuming that I like writing documentation ... Best - Ed > > behdad > > >> >> QUESTION: >> >> So, if I add a font file to a subdirectory of a directory that >> fontconfig knows about (via the fontconfig conf file), does fontconfig >> rescan that subdirectory and re-cache immediately? > > Any new process notices that immediately and updates the cache (make sure it > has permission to do so). Or you can call FcInitReinitialize(). However, I > strongly recommend that you keep all the font dirs out of the default > fontconfig config, and add only the directory for the font you are dealing > with into the config using FcConfigAppFontAddDir(). That should avoid lots > of possible scalability as well as security issues. I'd even recommend > using different cache dirs for each font dir. > >> Or, alternatively, is it necessary to call fc-cache manually? >> >> SCENARIO: >> >> The scenario for uploading new fonts to OFLB is that the fonts will be >> placed in a subdirectory of the "files/" path. The fontconfig conf >> file will know about the p
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] AdBard?
Seems reasonable to me. The adBard ads don't look too bad. - Ed Trager On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 10:23 AM, Dave Crossland wrote: > Hi, > > How do people feel about AdBard adverts of the OFLB site to raise > money for development? > > -- Forwarded message -- > From: Peter Brown > Date: 2009/6/2 > Subject: [FSF] FSF welcomes AdBard network for free software advertising > To: info-...@gnu.org > > > > http://www.fsf.org/news/ad-bard > > > "The Free Software Community now has an ethical alternative to ad > networks that promote proprietary software" > > >FSF welcomes AdBard network for free software advertising > > BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA -- Tuesday June 2, 2009 -- The Free Software > Foundation (FSF) today welcomed the launch of AdBard a new advertising > network for technology based websites based upon the promotion of Free, > Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) friendly products and services. > > The AdBard Network has been created by Tag1 Consulting to serve websites > dedicated to free software ideals, helping them connect with companies > selling products and services targeting a FLOSS audience. AdBard solves > the problem that more generic advertising has led to the display of > proprietary software products on sites that otherwise promote computer > user freedom. > > "The Free Software Community now has an ethical alternative to ad > networks that promote proprietary software" said Peter Brown, Executive > Director of the Free Software Foundation. "This is a huge win for many > of the sites that serve our community. And we wish AdBard and the > websites that display AdBard adverts every success. We also hope this > will inspire other ad networks to adopt similar policies." > > "AdBard is a great way for advertisers and publishers in the free > software community to come together and help grow the free software > services market." said Jeremy Andrew, CEO of Tag1. > > The FSF receives no money from AdBard and has no financial interest in > Tag1 Consulting, but is making this announcement to help the > advertising-supported web sites in the free software community to stop > legitimizing proprietary software by advertising it. > > Websites already using AdBard include http://Kerneltrap.org, > http://Libre.FM and http://BoycottNovell.com. For a complete list visit > http://adbard.net/adbard/websites. > > Advertisers can find out more by visiting http://adbard.net/advertise. > > > About the Free Software Foundation > > The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting > computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute > computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as > in freedom) software -- particularly the GNU operating system and its > GNU/Linux variants -- and free documentation for free software. The FSF > also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of > freedom in the use of software, and its Web sites, located at fsf.org > and gnu.org, are an important source of information about GNU/Linux. > Donations to support the FSF's work can be made at > http://donate.fsf.org. Its headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA. > > > About Tag1 Consulting, Inc. > > Tag1 Consulting, Inc. is a distinguished professional consulting company > headquartered in sunny Florida, with an international presence providing > computer consulting services worldwide. Tag1 focuses on performance and > scalability consulting of GNU/Linux and *BSD, using Apache, PHP, MySQL > and PostgreSQL, specializing on Drupal performance. For more information > visit www.tag1consulting.com. > > > Media Contact > > Matt Lee Campaigns Manager Free Software Foundation > PHONE +1 (617) 542 5942 x25 campai...@fsf.org > > ### > > -- > Peter T. Brown > Executive Director > Free Software Foundation| Tel: +1-617-542-5942 > www.fsf.org www.gnu.org | Cell: +1-617-319-5832 >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] multiple fonts in a single file
Hi, Ben, Not true. The fonts array *can* have multiple entries : Fontaine can be called with multiple font files as parameters. This is exactly how a ZIP package is handled: Multiple fonts are extracted from the ZIP package, then passed to fontaine. Fontaine is called only once. So keep the loop. Best - Ed >> >> As far as Fontaine goes, it will definitely see the first font face in >> a TTC package. But I'm reasonably certain that I don't yet have code >> to specifically handle the case of TTC files. >> > > OK, so there's only ever a single entry in the fonts array? I currently loop > over it so that might be future-proof ;-) >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] multiple fonts in a single file
I agree with Dave. (BTW, I should be back with some time to spend on OFLB next week). - Ed On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 1:35 PM, Dave Crossland wrote: > Personally I wouldn't worry about them, better to push on the features > blocking v2 going live :) > > Regards, Dave > > On 22 May 2009, 6:09 PM, "Ed Trager" wrote: > > Hi, Ben, > > The Debian CJK project files are TTC. But they don't contain > normal/italic/bold/etc/ variants. Instead, there are glyph variants > that are relevant to Chinese vs. Japanese typographic tradition > differences. > > I don't know of any Libre TTC files. Maybe something designed for > Apple OS X, perhaps? I believe TTC may be used a bit on Apple. > > As far as Fontaine goes, it will definitely see the first font face in > a TTC package. But I'm reasonably certain that I don't yet have code > to specifically handle the case of TTC files. > > Best - Ed > > On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 12:24 PM, Ben Weiner wrote: >> Hi there, > > Has an...
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] multiple fonts in a single file
Hi, Ben, The Debian CJK project files are TTC. But they don't contain normal/italic/bold/etc/ variants. Instead, there are glyph variants that are relevant to Chinese vs. Japanese typographic tradition differences. I don't know of any Libre TTC files. Maybe something designed for Apple OS X, perhaps? I believe TTC may be used a bit on Apple. As far as Fontaine goes, it will definitely see the first font face in a TTC package. But I'm reasonably certain that I don't yet have code to specifically handle the case of TTC files. Best - Ed On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 12:24 PM, Ben Weiner wrote: > Hi there, > > Has anyone got a sample font file that contains more than one variant (say, > both roman and italic)? I'd like to test the new OFLB site against it. > > Thanks, > Ben > > -- > Ben Weiner | http://readingtype.org.uk/about/contact.html > >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] use of (c) typefaces
Hi, all,
On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 10:36 AM, Ben Weiner wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Maybe we should have some kind of WhatTheFont client in admin panel to
>> check uploaded fonts for being actually (c) typefaces
>
> As Ed Trager says in his reply, Fontaine reads license fields from uploaded
> fonts. Fontaine is an important part of the OFLB not least for that reason.
>
> I think that reading the license from the file is a good thing to do. I
> think trying to match outlines is less good. The first is like a tick in a
> box ("Is this font correctly licensed?"). The second is like saying "We
> don't trust you. So we checked up on you! You are bad because our algorithm
> said so!" This reminds me of the surveillance/database state - something
> that is happening very quickly in the UK and makes me unhappy.
>
> So that is an emotionally-coloured answer :-(
>
> What the Font is a great tool though - love it ;-)
>
What the Font indeed must work by analyzing bitmaps more or less using
the principle I described in my previous posting of subtracting a test
bitmap from a known bitmap in the database and looking at the
"residue" left over : less "residue" means a better match. It still
seems like a hard problem to me: First, in the case of a system like
WhatTheFont, you must have a good algorithm for aligning and scaling
bitmaps to the right size before trying to subtract one from the
other. Secondly, if you have a large database of bitmaps, just using
a brute-force approach to match the test glyph bitmap against every
bitmap in the database seems inefficient ... Ideally one would want a
way to create some sort of digital "fingerprint" from the full bitmap
that could be used as an index key for rapid retrieval of
closely-matched glyph bitmaps. Of course there have got to be ways to
do this. But, as I said, it seems like quite a bit of work to me ...
In fact, I wish I knew about some of the ideas for doing such
"fingerprinting" of similar images for the purposes of indexing, etc.
: Knowing how to do that would also provide a nice way to show a user
related fonts. Similar to what web sites like Amazon Books does, but
for fonts: "If you like this font, take a look at these similar fonts
..."
- Ed
> Cheers,
> Ben
>
> --
> Ben Weiner | http://readingtype.org.uk/about/contact.html
>
>
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] use of (c) typefaces
Hi, Alexandre, On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 10:17 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote: > On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 6:15 PM, Ed Trager wrote: > >> But I assume that the problem you are really trying to address is one >> of people copying glyph outlines into a new font that they claim to be >> their own? > > Yes > >> For that kind of situation, one would, I assume, have to >> try to match glyph outlines against some searchable database of glyph >> outlines ... > > Exactly what I say :) > >> sounds hard to do ... > > But it works Does it? If someone was going to copy glyphs from some other font, they might either intentionally --or indeed completely *unintentionally*-- make changes to the glyph outlines. Visually the glyphs would still look very close to the originals, but the actual points and curves might be sufficiently different from the original to avoid detection by most simple matching algorithms. For example, instead of copying glyphs electronically, someone might scan printed pages at a reasonable degree of resolution, then use bitmap tracing to re-vectorize the glyphs. Indeed, for legitimate revivals of old printed typefaces that are in public domain, a number of useful tools and scripts are available exactly for the purpose of reviving old typefaces as modern digital "revivals". Any "revival" from scanned images will certainly result in unique outline vectorizations that will always differ from the originals (in the case where the "originals" were in fact produced from digital type). So in fact it now seems to me that having a database of *outlines* will be useless. A better approach would be to create a database of *bitmaps* of the glyphs at some sufficiently high pre-defined resolution. Then, to test a suspicious font, one would in fact rasterize the glyphs to a set of bitmaps at the same pre-defined resolution, then overlay and subtract one bitmap from the other (i.e., do some sort of pixel-aligned XOR operation on the two bitmaps) and see what was left over. If nothing or very little was left over, that could be used to flag a font for review by a human. Something like this would probably work ... Is this the idea you had, or some other idea? > > Alexandre >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] use of (c) typefaces
On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote: > Hi, > > Maybe we should have some kind of WhatTheFont client in admin panel to > check uploaded fonts for being actually (c) typefaces? How does one do that? Tell us the technical details. The program I wrote, Fontaine, determines the license from the "Copyright" field. We can use that to prevent storage of Fonts which lack an approved Open Source license. But I assume that the problem you are really trying to address is one of people copying glyph outlines into a new font that they claim to be their own? For that kind of situation, one would, I assume, have to try to match glyph outlines against some searchable database of glyph outlines ... sounds hard to do ... Best - Ed > > Alexandre >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Incomplete fonts/dingbat fonts
Do the dingbat fonts on OFLB have Unicode CMAPs? Are they putting the dingbat glyphs in the Dingbat symbols block, or just randomly in the ASCII or Latin-1 blocks? Fontaine obviously can't tell what the glyphs look like. Currently Fontaine does not have an orthography file for the dingbat symbols block, but that can be changed of course. Fontaine does currently have orthography files for the mathematical operators and chess symbols blocks, so obviously additional symbol blocks can be added. I don't see why a font that covered only certain symbol blocks -- Dingbats, chess symbols, mathematical operators, or otherwise-- should not be allowed on OFLB. In the future one will be able to search for fonts meeting certain criteria -- such as covering a specific orthographic block -- so as long as such fonts are properly constructed (i.e. have a Unicode CMAP) and can be properly categorized in the site's database, why not? Best - Ed On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 7:25 AM, Ben Weiner wrote: > Hi, > > Dave Crossland wrote: > >> >> We have agreed, I think, that we want OFLB to be a source to visitors of >> quality fonts, not lots of dross. Ed's fontaine is going to check unicode >> coverage of fonts, and testing it I found that a font I'm developing, with >> only lowercase glyphs, fails the coverage check since its a latin1 encoded >> font without a cap A, and so its obviously not a fully useful font. >> Therefore OFLB ought to politely decline it as a submission and ask me to >> fill out the caps, I think. >> >> This raises a problem for dingbat fonts, which we have some of, which have >> random glyphs used. I think the solution there is to direct such fonts to >> OCAL, right? >> >> I would, tentatively, agree. Though thinking of the origins of OFLB I > suspect they might wish to direct dingbats back here ;-) > > Ben > > -- > Ben Weiner | http://readingtype.org.uk/about/contact.html > >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] OFL problems, IPA License annoyances
On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 7:07 AM, Nicolas Spalinger wrote: > Ed Trager wrote: >> Hi, >> >> On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 4:05 AM, Nicolas Mailhot >> wrote: >>> >>> Le Lun 6 avril 2009 21:54, Dave Crossland a écrit : >>> >>>> A new OSI approved font license is out, the Japanese "IPA Font >>>> License": >>>> >>>> http://opensource.org/licenses/ipafont.html >>>> >>>> The OFLB is only going to run with the most popular free font >>>> licenses, to encourage license consolidation, so I doubt the OFLB will >>>> accept IFL fonts anyway. >>> I doubt anyone but the IPA people will use it, it is overly >>> restrictive and makes it impractical to use anything but the original >>> font. It's a very convoluted way to say "free to use but not modify) >> >> Exactly. >> >> I am guessing that the story behind this is that there are very few >> FLOSS Japanese fonts, and the ones clearly available for inclusion in >> Linux distributions until now are considered unsatisfactory. >> >> People have for a long time considered the IPA fonts better, but the >> vagueness of the original IPA license, available only in Japanese, >> made it impossible for the vendors to include with Linux >> distributions. >> >> I know that Mike Fabian at SuSE, who happens to know Japanese, tried >> for a long time to get clarification on the license. So now I guess >> this newly published IPA Font License in English finally clears the >> way for inclusion of the IPA fonts in Linux distributions ... > > And also, AFAIK Hideki Yamane and others from Debian Japan had > translated the license and had various talks over a long period of time > advocating a less restrictive model to IPA so that distros can include > it. We can now see the results of these efforts for all users of the > Japanese writing systems. It's great that IPA saw the benefits :-) > > So in a sense it's great news that they will re-release with a better > license but for the future maintainership of this font family basically > they're stuck in a silo, and I suspect the license might be somewhat of > a barrier to contributors :-( > > OTOH there's the great work of Arne Gotje on CJK fonts which may > well > provide the community with a .jp font family with more > re-usable and community-known licensing. And also don't forget the work of the WenQuanYi project, http://wenq.org/ But Japanese users may still argue that Gotje's project and the WenQuanYi project are both "Chinese" font projects and that there are stylistic differences among a subset of the Japanese Kanji ... Gotje is addressing the (actually very few ... ) stylistic differences directly using TTC. At this point in time, I'm not sure how or if the WQY project is dealing with the national glyph style differences ... Best - Ed
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] OFL problems, IPA License annoyances
Hi, On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 4:05 AM, Nicolas Mailhot wrote: > > > Le Lun 6 avril 2009 21:54, Dave Crossland a écrit : > >> A new OSI approved font license is out, the Japanese "IPA Font >> License": >> >> http://opensource.org/licenses/ipafont.html >> >> The OFLB is only going to run with the most popular free font >> licenses, to encourage license consolidation, so I doubt the OFLB will >> accept IFL fonts anyway. > > I doubt anyone but the IPA people will use it, it is overly > restrictive and makes it impractical to use anything but the original > font. It's a very convoluted way to say "free to use but not modify) Exactly. I am guessing that the story behind this is that there are very few FLOSS Japanese fonts, and the ones clearly available for inclusion in Linux distributions until now are considered unsatisfactory. People have for a long time considered the IPA fonts better, but the vagueness of the original IPA license, available only in Japanese, made it impossible for the vendors to include with Linux distributions. I know that Mike Fabian at SuSE, who happens to know Japanese, tried for a long time to get clarification on the license. So now I guess this newly published IPA Font License in English finally clears the way for inclusion of the IPA fonts in Linux distributions ...
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] OFL problems, IPA License annoyances
Hi, All, I've added IPA license detection to Fontaine: r20 | edtrager | 2009-04-06 17:40:31 -0400 (Mon, 06 Apr 2009) | 1 line Added Information-technology Promotion Agency, Japan (IPA) license which is now an Open Source approved license (http://opensource.org/licenses/ipafont.html). Thanks to Dave Crossland for this information. - Ed On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 3:54 PM, Dave Crossland wrote: > Hi, > > More licensing curmudgeon-ry from me I'm afraid :-) > > A new OSI approved font license is out, the Japanese "IPA Font License": > >http://opensource.org/licenses/ipafont.html > > The OFLB is only going to run with the most popular free font > licenses, to encourage license consolidation, so I doubt the OFLB will > accept IFL fonts anyway. > > So, if you're not interested in font licensing, please note the > existence of the license and mark this thread as read :-) > > I wonder if the story of its creation will be published to the same > extent that the SIL OFL process has been documented; I guess that > there was some kind of wrestling match between proprietary-minded font > developers and freedom-minded customers. > > Some of the history is revealed with a quick search: Bruce Perens has > been helpfully guiding the drafts of this - > http://perens.com/blog/?s=open+font - although, sadly, his original > objections which I share about only distributing derived versions as > "diff" files - > http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?17:mss:516:200902:ahjoeececbbcpiajppfi > - apply to the final OSI approved license. > > Although I'm happy some Japanese fonts are being released with an OSI > approved license, this diff requirement makes it a very poor license > IMO. The draft Perens linked to at > http://ipafont.ipa.go.jp/enduser_license_draft090304.pdf has the > makings of a much better license, and is probably only interesting to > me so I'll skip over my thoughts about it here. > > However, the key thing about the license is that it (appears to) patch > the "PDF loophole" that Perens claims the SIL OFL has at > http://perens.com/blog/2009/02/17/64/ > >"loophole that would allow the conversion of any font under the > license to public domain" > > OFL S5: "he Font Software, modified or unmodified, in part or in > whole, must be distributed entirely under this license, and must not > be distributed under any other license. The requirement for fonts to > remain under this license does not apply to any document created using > the Font Software." > - http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=OFL_web > > IFL S2.4: "In the case of a Digital Document File containing Embedded > Fonts created by embedding such fonts to the extent allowed under this > Agreement, the Recipient may conduct Reproduction and Other > Exploitation of the Digital Document File, without requiring the > Recipient of such Digital Document File to comply with this Agreement. > For the avoidance of doubt, such Recipient may not create and conduct > Reproduction and Other Exploitation of a Derived Program from such > Digital Document File except according to the terms of this > Agreement." > - http://opensource.org/licenses/ipafont.html > > I hope this will help in the updating of the GNU GPL Font Exception :-) > > Cheers > Dave >
[OpenFontLibrary] Fontaine Announcement
* ANNOUNCING FONTAINE * Hi, everyone, Fontaine is a command-line utility that displays key meta information about font files, including but not limited to font name, style, weight, glyph count, character count, copyright, license information and orthographic coverage. The software is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) v. 2 or any later version. I am writing this software initially for use with the Open Font Library project (OFLB). The OFLB project is still "in the works" and as a result it is accurate to say that Fontaine is also still "in the works". Nevertheless, I believe that Fontaine will have application outside of the OFLB project. In order to meet various possible application needs, Fontaine has the ability to produce reports in JSON, XML, XHTML, and TEXT formats. I have created a web page documenting Fontaine on Unifont.org: http://www.unifont.org/fontaine/ I have also created a Sourceforge.net project for Fontaine: http://sourceforge.net/projects/fontaine/ ... and the source code is available for checkout from SVN: svn co https://fontaine.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/fontaine I plan to create an interactive web page which will demonstrate how Fontaine works. However I haven't got quite that far yet. The software uses a CMAKE-based build system and is known to work on Linux and OSX. It has not yet been extensively tested on other platforms. Some features which will be needed for the OFLB site are still missing and implementing those features will take priority. Help on completing, vetting, and expanding the orthography data files will be especially welcome. An initial list of known bugs is shown on the unifont.org/fontaine web page. Suggestions for further improvement and patches for bug fixes are welcome. Note that in many cases Fontaine reports on entire "orthography groups" (such as "Western European", "Central European", "Pan African Latin", etc.) rather than on individual languages the way that software like FontConfig does. The orthography work I have done for Fontaine has required striking a careful balance between opposing forces -- simplicity and generality versus specificity. At the extremes, there are "pervasively adopted" scripts (like Latin) and "singularly adopted" scripts (like Japanese). Those opposing forces operate differently on different scripts, especially at the extremes of the continuum. Fontaine thus uses its own set of orthography files in order to provide reports in ways that are, to the best of my abilities, most meaningful in the context of fonts. Fontaine is new, so certainly the jury is still out regarding whether I have made the right decisions here, but I thought this especially worth mentioning given the recent and very laudable work on orthography files in FontConfig. Best Wishes -- Ed Trager
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] [Open Font Library] Upload Flagged
Hi, Jon, If you know the right people (preferably those who control purse strings ;-) ) at Wikimedia, please keep plugging OFLB and see if we can get some $ from Wikimedia foundation to get OFLB done properly. For example, even for OFLB to handle @font-face properly is going to require some fairly sophisticated Javascript detection on whether a browser provides @font-face support or not. It's going to take person-hours to write that. And even before we talk about the @font-face features in OFLB, we need to get the basic font uploading and screening/ analysis (via fontaine) done : that also will require person-hours. Best - Ed On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 3:57 PM, Jon Phillips wrote: > Awesome!!! I really think connecting in with this @font-face is going > to be great. I was chatting with Brion Vibber from Wikimedia > Foundation and others about how awesome OFLB is going to be for the > web once more browsers and sites start using font-face... > > Its got me all pumped up! > > Jon > > On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 12:55 PM, Dave Crossland wrote: >> 2009/3/4 Nicolas Spalinger : >>> if there are problems upstream of >>> pxfonts itself, then it's another story... >> >> Right. >> >> Well, I've just opened "p52003l.pfb" from the Ubuntu gsfonts package, >> and Asana from the OFLB, and the pxfonts at >> http://www.ctan.org/get/fonts/pxfonts.zip from >> http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/pxfonts/ >> >> That pxfonts zip contains a few dozen small font files, with a lot of >> maths related glyphs, and none of the standard roman glyphs "abcde..." >> >> The URW Palladio has all the roman glyphs and none of the fancy maths ones. >> >> Asana has both, but there are often some subtle differences from URW >> and Asana, and sometimes not... >> >> http://dave.lab6.com/acid/dump/2009/urw_asana_1.png >> http://dave.lab6.com/acid/dump/2009/urw_asana_1_zoom.png >> http://dave.lab6.com/acid/dump/2009/urw_asana_a.png >> http://dave.lab6.com/acid/dump/2009/urw_px_asana_copyright-handles.png >> http://dave.lab6.com/acid/dump/2009/urw_px_asana_copyright.png >> http://dave.lab6.com/acid/dump/2009/urw_px_asana_dollars.png >> >> -- >> Regards, >> Dave >> > > > > -- > Jon Phillips > http://rejon.org/ >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] [Open Font Library] Upload Flagged
I agree 100% with Nicolas on this one. OpenFontLibrary needs to be of the highest quality on every front. The font analysis program I'm working on (fontaine) will be able to tell you what is in the Copyright and License fields of a TTF or OTF font file, so hopefully that will serve as a first line of defense on the new site. Maybe fontaine can help speed up the audit of fonts that are already on the site (once I get fontaine to a releasable point, that is ...) Best - Ed On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 2:23 PM, Nicolas Spalinger wrote: > Jon Phillips wrote: >> Actually, I think we should launch asap. If there are problematic >> fonts, then we can rely upon flagging to help track them >> down...otherwise, we'll never get to the launch! :) >> >> Jon > > I beg to disagree :-) > > If we launch without any licensing audit of what's currently in the db > and no moderation queue on the new site, then all the beautiful design > and great functionality work that was done recently will be ignored by > the designers who care about quality and respecting authors' rights and > they may well simply leave. Not what we want. > > To quote Raph Levien's latest comment on a typophile thread: > "openfontlibrary.org has been disappointing, partly because they haven’t > reached anywhere near parity with commercial sites for just showing the > font, and partly because there’s no emphasis on promoting high-quality > fonts above random dross. The new version may well turn out better in > both regards." > > The transition to the new site should really be the time to do the audit > (like we agreed to do at the last LGM). > > Post-moderation has its role to play but we need to see the before/after > in terms of our licensing policies. > > > What do the others think? > Please speak up. > > Cheers, > > -- > Nicolas Spalinger, NRSI volunteer > Debian/Ubuntu font team / OpenFontLibrary > http://planet.open-fonts.org > > >
[OpenFontLibrary] Text Layout and Typography Working Group at LGM (1) URLs for the wikis (2) Accomodations
Hi, everyone, (1) WIKI URLs: You probably already know these, but just a quick update in case you don't: 1.1. Text Layout and Typography 2009 wiki is at: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/TextLayout2009 1.2. I also have added the Text Layout and Typography 2009 meeting under "Presenters and Talks" on the LGM wiki as follows: http://create.freedesktop.org/wiki/index.php/Conference#Presenters_and_Talks (2) ACCOMODATIONS: According to the LGM Wiki, there will be "MULTI"-style dorm rooms holding 3 people for apx. CAD $66 (to be confirmed). Those of you who attended TLM in Glasgow may remember that we booked a big dorm room at a very reasonable price and that seemed to work out really well for people. So if any of you are interested in a similar inexpensive but congenial arrangement for the Text Layout meeting this year, please let me know and I will work on reserving rooms. The sooner folks let me know, the more likely we will be successful at reserving the limited number of "multi" rooms available. Best Wishes -- Ed Trager
[OpenFontLibrary] 2009 TEXT LAYOUT AND TYPOGRAPHY WORKSHOP AT LGM IN MONTREAL
Hi, everyone, We are planning to hold the 2009 Text Layout and Typography Workshop as part of the Linux Graphics Meeting (LGM) this May 6-7-8-9 in Montréal, Canada. I've created a planning page for the meeting: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/TextLayout2009 Please feel free to add your attendance, presentation, and code hacking plans to that wiki page. Summarizing what I've heard so far: Confirmed: Jon Phillips, Behdad Esfahbod, Jonathan Kew, Kenichi Handa Probably Attending: Eric Mader, Ed Trager Probably Not Attending: Sharon Correll Confirmed Not Attending: Ben Laenen I'll post additional details on http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/TextLayout2009 as things develop. Best Wishes -- Ed Trager
[OpenFontLibrary] 2009 TEXT LAYOUT AND TYPOGRAPHY WORKSHOP / MEETING SURVEY
Hi, Eric, No decision yet. I suspect that LGM is probably the preferred venue, but I don't really have enough "data" to back that assumption. So if a few more people want to voice their preference, then I promise to actually do something. Sorry, I've been completely swamped with other projects, but if people want to help me out by quickly responding to the little survey below, then I think we can move things forward quite quickly :-) = 2009 TEXT LAYOUT AND TYPOGRAPHY WORKSHOP / MEETING SURVEY = (1) VENUE. I PREFER THE FOLLOWING VENUE: [ ] LGM in Montreál 6-9 May 2009 ( http://www.libregraphicsmeeting.org/2009/ ) [ ] Linux Found. Collab. Summit Apr 8-10, 2009 in San Fransisco http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/collaboration-summit [ ] OTHER (write in): __ (2) ATTENDANCE: [ ] I plan to attend. [ ] Sorry, can't make it. [ ] I want to be able to follow along remotely via streaming video and IRC, Skype conference call, and/or other digital access technology (3) PRESENTATION TOPICS: [ ] I want to present on (topic): [ ] I can't be there in person, but I want to submit a paper/presentation/video on: (topic): _ (We can arrange to have someone present on your behalf, if you want) [ ] I want somebody to present on:_ (4) CODE: [ ] I want to hack on (project:) __ during the gathering (5) FOOD AND BEVERAGE: Check all that you like or just write in something ... [ ] Sugar Shack [ ] Pizza [ ] Cheetos [ ] Pho [ ] Plaa chu-chi [ ] Kendall Jackson 2004 Taylor Peak Estate Merlot [ ] Gordon Biersch [ ] Unibroue (6) ADD YOUR OWN STUFF HERE: ... Best to everyone -- Ed On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 12:11 PM, Eric Mader wrote: > Hi, > > Did the location for the 2009 Text Layout and Typography Workshop ever get > decided? > > Regards, > Eric Mader > > > Ed Trager wrote: > >> Hi, everyone, >> >> Is there interest in having a Text Layout and Typography Workgroup >> meeting at this year's upcoming LF Collaboration Summit April 8-10 >> (Wed-Fri) in San Fransisco? If so, please email back complete with >> agenda ideas. >> >> I will be happy to take the initial lead in organizing an agenda and >> reserving space with the Collaboration Summit folks if I hear back >> from interested folks. In order to reserve space, I need to get some >> kind of ballpark head count, so respond if you are interested. >> >> Ideally I'd like to be able to communicate back to the organizers next >> week so we can reserve space in a timely manner. >> >> Best Wishes -- Ed Trager >> >
[OpenFontLibrary] Participatory Font Democracy -- OFLB Interim Report
Hi, everyone, Nicolas Spalinger suggested I publicize the URL for the interim development report I wrote in January for tug.org: https://tug.org/tc/devfund/fontfund.pdf Feel free to take a look. Tug.org is one of the sponsors of the recent OFLB work. See https://tug.org/tc/devfund/grants.html to see what other stuff they have been funding. Best - Ed
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Font previewer requirements
Hi, all,
OK, I'll try to clarify ...
On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 10:47 PM, wrote:
>>> A good static previewer:
>>
>>Ed Trager's upcoming "Fontaine" ought to be helpful here :-)
>
> Does that have a webpage?
>
There are a number of different programs being developed for the the
OFLB web site:
FONTAINE:
-
This is a new program I'm writing initially for the OFLB project. The
software is getting close to a releasable stage, but I haven't
released it yet. The primary license will be GPL v. 2.0 or any later
version. I am thinking of creating a SourceForge project for SVN
hosting of fontaine, but I haven't got that far yet.
Fontaine is a command-line utility that displays key meta information
about font files, including but not limited to font name, style,
weight, glyph count, character count, copyright, license information
and orthographic coverage.
Much effort has gone into reporting orthographic coverage categories
that are meaningful to people without requiring that users have
intimate familiarity with all of the jargon of ISO standards and
Unicode coverage blocks.
To facilitate different usage scenarios, fontaine produces reports in
JSON (default), XML, XHTML, and TEXT formats. In the code, there is a
base "MLR" ("markup language report") class from which specific
reporting classes like JSON and XML are derived. This architecture
should make it easy to create additional report formats if needed.
Fontaine's orthography database includes "sample sentences" and
"sample characters" for each orthography. For many orthographies, the
"sample sentence" (or sometimes more than one sentence) is actually a
pangram. However, since many orthographies, such as Chinese and
Japanese, don't support "pangrams" per se, I just use the more general
term "sample sentence" which works across all orthographies. I
provide instances of pangrams for those orthographies where I have
been able to locate them. Future community contributions will
certainly be valuable in expanding and vetting the orthography data
that I have compiled so far.
The plan is that report output from Fontaine can be used as input to
generate a font preview image. The font preview image can be
generated from one or more of the sample sentences (pangrams) or
sample character strings provided by fontaine. A separate program
--such as PCFP (below)-- is used to create the preview graphic.
I am still thinking about how this last step should best be handled.
At issue is the fact that most of the good modern Open Source fonts
provide coverage for a number of different orthographic categories.
For example, a font like SIL's Gentium covers many different Latin
orthographies (incl. but not limited to Western Latin, Central
European, Turkish, and Vietnamese), plus both monotonic and polytonic
Greek, plus Cyrillic, and more. So how do you choose one
representative pangram or sample character string for use as the
default static font preview ?
PCFP
--
"pcfp" stands for "Pango-Cairo Font Playground". Pcfp is a simple
command-line utility I wrote to take a font specification and a text
string on the command line and render the text in the specified font
to a PNG (portable networks graphics) canvas. The dynamic font
previewer currently on http://openfontlibrary.fontly.org/ uses pcfp on
the server. One significant advantage of pcfp is that complex scripts
like Arabic and Devanagari are rendered correctly -- because of Pango
of course. Pcfp is released under GPL v.2.0 or any later version.
"Font Playground" and "Key Curry"
---
A browser-based dynamic font previewer requires an AJAX-based
Javascript program on the client side.
For the OFLB project, I developed a new version of the "Font
Playground" virtual typesetter to interact with pcfp on the server.
I also developed the "Key Curry" Javascript program to provide
"virtual keyboard" services so that users would be able to easily type
a wider range of scripts and Unicode characters than normally provided
on typical desktop computers.
I am still thinking about the exact licensing strategy for "Font
Playground" and "Key Curry". These Javascript programs use "Gladiator
Components" (GC) -- a Javascript AJAX and GUI framework that I and a
colleague of mine developed. It is almost certain that we will employ
a dual-licensing strategy for the GC Javascript components -- an Open
Source community license for non-profit web sites, and a commercial
license for commercial web sites.
This is why --if you read the fine print-- it says "The Font
Playground typesetter and KeyCurry virtual keyboard were built using
Gladiator Components and are copyright (c) 2008 by Edward H. TRAGER.
Direct inquiries for use to ed dot trager at gmail dot com." You can
basically translate this as "Ed has not yet decided on the licensing
model for these Javascript components." I will resolve these
questions by the time the new OFLB site is really ready for launching.
Best - E
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] @font-face, is it really needed for font preview?
Hi, Aaron, That's definitely worth looking into! - Ed On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 11:32 AM, Aaron Spaulding wrote: > -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- > Hash: SHA1 > > Ed, > > You're using Cairo for rendering the type specimens right? Could you > not just use a SVG Surface instead? > > Aaron > > Ed Trager wrote: >> Hi, Egil, >> >> I and others have thought of this before too. I think someone >> connected to SIL's Graphite project worked on something along these >> lines in order to support complex layout scripts like Burmese in the >> current crop of SVG-aware but Burmese-not-aware browsers. >> >> To write a server-side program that generates a bitmap image of text >> is fairly simple. To write a server-side program that generates the >> SVG snippets instead is more work. However such an SVG curve >> generator would be pretty cool because then you could scale the text >> dynamically on the client side, change colors using CSS, and generally >> have a lot of fun playing around with the SVG outlines directly on the >> client side. So it would be quite cool if someone did it. >> >> -- Ed >> >> >> On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 10:44 AM, Egil Möller > wrote: >>> Quite a few webbrowsers used today seems to support SVG images. Maybe >>> rendering the preview to SVG (curves) would work? >>> >>> Khaled Hosny wrote: >>> >>> The new OFLB website uses @font-face CSS property for font preview, but >>> I wonder if we really need it? Most browsers don't support it, even with >>> the release of Firefox 3.1 we still have around 70% of web users with >>> browsers that don't support it. Even if we put this aside, why I need to >>> download a several megabits font just to get a static preview of it, it >>> isn't even dynamic, what is the benefit (some Arabic or CJK fonts are >>> even larger). Don't get me wrong, I find @font-face very great feature, >>> but I think we are misusing it here. >>> >>> I think generating server side previews gives more better and responsive >>> user experience, I think "font playground" already does this, just we >>> need to merge it into the "main body" of the page instead of the current >>> hidden (and annoying) separate popup (or whatever it is called). >>> >>> Regards, >>> Khaled >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Konsulent, Fri Programvare / Free Software Consultant >>> Mobil: +47 - 473 44 024 >>> Telefon: +47 - 21 53 69 00, Fax: +47 - 21 53 69 09 >>> Adr: Nydalsveien 30b, 3. etg., 0484 Oslo >>> Web: www.freecode.no >>> >>> Check out our published Free Software @ http://code.freecode.no. >>> > > -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org > > iEYEARECAAYFAkmQWoMACgkQEO7oWqc3IdqT8ACgntFL+fv4tS3buP88CWdVMZV8 > lhAAn0xWLbarcoOyR27ySODDoEbnT2YU > =mE/I > -END PGP SIGNATURE- > >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] @font-face, is it really needed for font preview?
A FontForge script would be sufficient for showing individual glyphs or even laying out text for simple scripts like Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, etc. But don't forget that it would be insufficient for showing text in complex text layout (CTL) scripts like Arabic and Devanagari ... for those you need a shaper library like Pango or Uniscribe. -- Ed On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 11:09 AM, Daniel Johnson wrote: > On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 11:03 AM, Ed Trager wrote: >> To write a server-side program that generates a bitmap image of text >> is fairly simple. To write a server-side program that generates the >> SVG snippets instead is more work. However such an SVG curve >> generator would be pretty cool because then you could scale the text >> dynamically on the client side, change colors using CSS, and generally >> have a lot of fun playing around with the SVG outlines directly on the >> client side. So it would be quite cool if someone did it. > > It would be trivial to write a FontForge script that generated an SVG > font anytime someone uploaded a new .otf, .ttf or .sfd file. However, > browser support for SVG fonts is virtually nonexistent. As I recall > reading, Firefox support for SVG fonts missed the 3.1 feature > deadline. It's possible to turn an SVG font into a series of standard > SVG shapes; all you need to do is a vertical flip and some scaling -- > a simple "transform" attribute on the element surrounding the > glyph. > > Regards, > Daniel >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] @font-face, is it really needed for font preview?
Hi, Nicolas, Getting the SVG output small enough would really not be a problem. There are serveral ways to do it: * One way is to send over the SVG data but be sure to use CSS classes for the styling. A lot of SVG graphics programs inline too much style information repeatedly, which is uneccessary. * Another approach would be to send back the curve data in a more minimalistic XML or JSON format, and then actually have Javascript classes that flesh out the data into SVG. I've actually taken this approach before for loading X-Y plot data dynamically -- see demo at http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/gladiatorcomponents/plot.html -- Ed On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 11:00 AM, Nicolas Mailhot wrote: > > > Le Lun 9 février 2009 16:44, Egil Möller a écrit : >> Quite a few webbrowsers used today seems to support SVG images. Maybe >> rendering the preview to SVG (curves) would work? > > BTW if someone could spend the time to write a SVG preview generator > that could be integrated in web sites and package generation > processes, that would be great. > > The constrains are basically to generate the preview for a random > number of font files taken as input, with an SVG output that showcases > the main scripts the font files support (that means script detection > using fontconfig, heuristics to select the most interesting glyphs to > showcase, pangrams? and an svgz output small enough to be integrated > everywhere) > > -- > Nicolas Mailhot > >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] @font-face, is it really needed for font preview?
Hi, Egil, I and others have thought of this before too. I think someone connected to SIL's Graphite project worked on something along these lines in order to support complex layout scripts like Burmese in the current crop of SVG-aware but Burmese-not-aware browsers. To write a server-side program that generates a bitmap image of text is fairly simple. To write a server-side program that generates the SVG snippets instead is more work. However such an SVG curve generator would be pretty cool because then you could scale the text dynamically on the client side, change colors using CSS, and generally have a lot of fun playing around with the SVG outlines directly on the client side. So it would be quite cool if someone did it. -- Ed On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 10:44 AM, Egil Möller wrote: > Quite a few webbrowsers used today seems to support SVG images. Maybe > rendering the preview to SVG (curves) would work? > > Khaled Hosny wrote: > > The new OFLB website uses @font-face CSS property for font preview, but > I wonder if we really need it? Most browsers don't support it, even with > the release of Firefox 3.1 we still have around 70% of web users with > browsers that don't support it. Even if we put this aside, why I need to > download a several megabits font just to get a static preview of it, it > isn't even dynamic, what is the benefit (some Arabic or CJK fonts are > even larger). Don't get me wrong, I find @font-face very great feature, > but I think we are misusing it here. > > I think generating server side previews gives more better and responsive > user experience, I think "font playground" already does this, just we > need to merge it into the "main body" of the page instead of the current > hidden (and annoying) separate popup (or whatever it is called). > > Regards, > Khaled > > > > -- > Konsulent, Fri Programvare / Free Software Consultant > Mobil: +47 - 473 44 024 > Telefon: +47 - 21 53 69 00, Fax: +47 - 21 53 69 09 > Adr: Nydalsveien 30b, 3. etg., 0484 Oslo > Web: www.freecode.no > > Check out our published Free Software @ http://code.freecode.no. >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] @font-face, is it really needed for font preview?
Hi, Khaled, You are correct that the "Font Playground" previewer I wrote provides dynamic previews using server-generated PNG images and AJAX for communication. It currently works using a div-based popup-window which I thought would be a good way to avoid gobbling up too much "screen real estate" -- especially when you consider the fact that a single font may have a number of style variants. I also wrote an additional bit of Javascript which attempts to dynamically detect whether the browser provides @font-face support or not. As far as I know, that javascript has not yet been incorporated into the new site. This bit of javascript in theory will allow a site like OFLB to dynamically alter the display of a page based on whether @font-face support is present or not. Here is the demo page -- feel free to look at the javascript under the hood and improve it if possible: http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/fontface/ Also although that bit of Javascript code is as reliable as I could get it to be, at this point in time the browsers are *not* yet reliable with regard to @font-face support. So the Javascript may report a browser as having support because the foundational stuff is already incorporated into the browser code, but the support may not yet work (Google Chrome, based on WebKit, is a good example of this). There are also versions of Opera and Firefox out there that purport to support @font-face but don't really, or do so only partially. For example, some support TTF but fail on OTF fonts on one platform or another. I think I have my http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/fontface/ URL currently set only for testing a couple of TTF files -- I had previously used OTF files which often didn't work and left me quite confused. -- Ed > On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 10:29 AM, Khaled Hosny wrote: > > The new OFLB website uses @font-face CSS property for font preview, but > I wonder if we really need it? Most browsers don't support it, even with > the release of Firefox 3.1 we still have around 70% of web users with > browsers that don't support it. Even if we put this aside, why I need to > download a several megabits font just to get a static preview of it, it > isn't even dynamic, what is the benefit (some Arabic or CJK fonts are > even larger). Don't get me wrong, I find @font-face very great feature, > but I think we are misusing it here. > > I think generating server side previews gives more better and responsive > user experience, I think "font playground" already does this, just we > need to merge it into the "main body" of the page instead of the current > hidden (and annoying) separate popup (or whatever it is called). > > Regards, > Khaled > > -- > Khaled Hosny > Arabic localizer and member of Arabeyes.org team > > -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) > > iEYEARECAAYFAkmQS+UACgkQRoqITGOuyPIgZgCeKnapT7eoGmY3SKhRdUgtROwq > ys4An1fl1UzKxbJi74bpi/DaKq58n50M > =blSJ > -END PGP SIGNATURE- > >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Fwd: [CREATE] LGM 2009 update
Hi, Dave and everyone, The Text Layout working group has the option of holding a meeting in conjunction with either the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in San Fransisco in April, or in conjunction with LGM in Montreal in May. Do people have a preference on the venue? I put out an email yesterday asking if folks were interested in the LF San Fransisco venue and so far have received only one response. I'd like to know if people prefer LGM. For me personally Montreal would be easier to get to. Best - Ed On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 9:54 AM, Dave Crossland wrote: > FYI :) > > How many people from OFLB are planning to attend LGM? I am :-) > > -- Forwarded message -- > From: Louis Desjardins > Date: 2009/1/15 > Subject: [CREATE] LGM 2009 update > To: Create ML > > > Hi all, > > I have updated the LGM wiki with the latest information. > > http://create.freedesktop.org/wiki/index.php/Conference > > Please review and comment here on this list or post questions on the > wiki when you feel we are missing info. From now on I will be online > either on IRC #lgm, here on the list or on the wiki. I will try to be > as quick to react as possible! > > We're going to hit the accelerator pedal. There is so much I can do on > the local side. I need help on the sponsors/pledgie campaign and on > the website, mainly. > > Each LGM team should not be shy to file the wiki with presentations > proposals. Please note that even if we have an extra day, we have > reduced the number of slots in order to increase the time allowed for > team meetings. > > Have a look and get back here! > > Cheers! > > Louis > > -- > Louis Desjardins > Organiser > Libre Graphics Meeting 2009 - Montréal > > ___ > CREATE mailing list > cre...@lists.freedesktop.org > http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/create > > > > > -- > Regards, > Dave > > "Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers > and deluge the hobby market with good software." > - Bill Gates, 1976, in want of www.gnuherds.org >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] timeline + going live
Hi, Jon, I'm the guy currently working on a server-side font analysis program for OFLB. The idea is that when a user uploads a new font, the program analyzes the font to determine various properties of the font, including orthographic coverage, *inter alia*. The program's output report will inform OFLB whether, for example, a font covers only Western Latin or whether it also covers Central European, Turkish, or Vietnamese extended Latin characters. Similarly useful analyses will be performed for non-Latin scripts, if present in the font. The report results will then be stored so that users browsing available fonts will be able to instantly see coverage results. Eventually it should also be possible to search for fonts meeting specific coverage requirements, among other things. I personally believe that the font analysis program will form a key part of the new OFLB site. The font analysis program is currently in an alpha stage of development. I think I will have the program to a fairly decent "beta" stage by the middle of February. Integrating the program into the OFLB cms will also require development work and time. If I had to put forth an estimated completion date, I'd venture to say no sooner than the middle of March. There are probably other aspects of the development picture that I am not aware of, so it would be good to hear what Dave and Ben say. I can only address the area of site development that I am personally involved in. Best - Ed On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 3:34 AM, Jon Phillips wrote: > > Dave and Ben, what else is needed to get OFLB live? What timetable? I > want to make sure we get good press launch out of things too. My head > hasn't been so in the game, but want to make sure and assist on powerful > lauch. > > You guys have and are doing great job! > > Jon > -- > Jon Phillips > http://rejon.org/ > San Francisco + Beijing > GLOBAL +1.415.830.3884 . USA +1.510.499.0894 . CHINA +86.1.360.282.8624 > IM/skype: kidproto - Jabber: re...@gristle.org > http://rejon.org/bio . http://rejon.org/bio/cv . http://rejon.org/projects >
[OpenFontLibrary] Fwd: [Desktop_architects] Collaboration Summit Meeting Space
Hi, everyone, Is there interest in having a Text Layout and Typography Workgroup meeting at this year's upcoming LF Collaboration Summit April 8-10 (Wed-Fri) in San Fransisco? If so, please email back complete with agenda ideas. I will be happy to take the initial lead in organizing an agenda and reserving space with the Collaboration Summit folks if I hear back from interested folks. In order to reserve space, I need to get some kind of ballpark head count, so respond if you are interested. Ideally I'd like to be able to communicate back to the organizers next week so we can reserve space in a timely manner. Best Wishes -- Ed Trager -- Forwarded message -- From: C. Craig Ross Date: Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 2:55 PM Subject: [Desktop_architects] Collaboration Summit Meeting Space To: desktop_archite...@linuxfoundation.org Hello and Happy New Year. The 2009 Collaboration Summit (April 8-10, 2009, San Francisco, CA) is coming up quickly and we have already started preparing the schedule. It is very important for LF to provide a venue for our workgroups to meet so workgroup leads should submit your request as soon as possible. Please keep in mind that there are no guarantees as space is limited. If your workgroup is planning on meeting at the Collaboration Summit please email me with the following information: 1. How many attendees for your workgroup session? 2. How much time will you need (N hours, 1/2 day or 1 day)? 3. Are there any technical requirements (projector, etc.)? If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact me. Thank you. Cheers, C. -- C. Craig Ross Community Relations Manager The Linux Foundation +1 613 220 8998 http://www.linuxfoundation.org/ ___ Desktop_architects mailing list desktop_archite...@lists.linux-foundation.org https://lists.linux-foundation.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop_architects
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] font face firefox friendly?
Hi, everyone,
It would be nice if there were a way to query the browser (using
Javascript) about whether web fonts are supported or not. If that
were possible, then a web site like the new OFLB site could
dynamically show the web font preview when supported, and hide it from
view when not supported.
The Javascript would be trivial to write but my investigation so far
has not revealed any way of detecting web font support.
It is a common "best practice" principle when coding in Javascript
nowadays to check for the existence of certain properties. If the
property exists, then we can exploit the functionality whose presence
is implied by the presence of that property. If not, we can code
around it.
So perhaps we need to encourage the browser developers to expose a
public property, or document such if it already exists:
if( thisBrowser.supportsWebFonts ){
myWebFontDiv.style.display="block";
}else{
myWebFontDiv.style.display="none";
}
While I agree that the new OFLB site needs to rally toward the future,
unfortunately it looks clunky to say "The text to the right should be
rendered in Font_ thanks to web font linking with @font-face. If
you see a monospace font, your web browser probably does not yet
support this new web technology."
On my laptop, I see DejaVu Mono Sans used in FF 3.0.5 for the
unsupported @font-face preview. The problem is, unless I look very
closely, I might actually think that I *have* got a preview of
"Font_xxx" --especially if "Font_xxx" is some kind of sans serif font
(like Puritan, for example)!
If someone on this list has any ideas on how to check for @font-face
support using Javascript, please let all of us know about it.
- Ed Trager
On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 4:00 PM, Dave Crossland wrote:
>
> 2009/1/6 :
> >
> >>Dave Crossland wrote:
> >>FF3.1
> >
> > So...you are focusing quite a bit of the new site on a feature not present
> > in MSIE, and only present in a beta version of Firefox. Hopefully
> > more browsers will support this in the future
>
> MSIE has web fonts for its DRM format, which the W3C has rejected, so
> no one else will ever support it. So we have to just wait for IE to
> support non-DRM formats.
>
> Opera's latest beta has support. Safari ships with support for nearly
> a year. Chrome is rumoured to have support.
>
> Web fonts is coming.
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Stats for openfontlibrary.org
In my opinion, Alexa rankings don't mean anything unless a web site is in the top 100 or top 1000. After that, it is better to just look at the number of unique monthly visitors and track whether that is increasing or decreasing from month to month. For openfontlibrary.org, we don't expect the site to become popular until after the first phase of revisions and improvements are complete. If we then get some good press, the numbers will increase of their own accord over time. MSIE7 ... I'll refrain from commenting on that one. - Ed > The stats for openfontlibrary.org seem not to work in MSIE 7: > https://awstats.osuosl.org/list/openfontlibrary.org > > The stats are interesting, but also compare the Compete.com rank for > openfontlibrary.org: #448,339, the Alexa Rank is: #643,978 & Quantcast says > not > enough info. Openfontlibrary isn't exactly a hugely popular site, according > to > those 3rd party stats.
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Should we (via moderation) accept all Free Software licenses?
Hi, Dave, On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 6:59 AM, Dave Crossland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > It seems fonts developed in sourceforge like systems may not be able > to support font linking at all, or only from their own sites. > > So, as policy, should we (via moderation) accept all Free Software licenses? Ed Trager: Yes. Question: Are all of these licenses OSI-recognized? Maybe we could have OSI-recognized license tags in one color and non-OSI-recognized tags in some other color or something like that? > > I'd like a "show of hands" - Please reply with your name and then > "yes" or "no" - we can then debate the "no"s :-) > > Dave Crossland: Yes > > -- Forwarded message -- > From: Ben Laenen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: 2008/11/11 > Subject: Re: [DejaVu-fonts] Open Font Library wants to host your fonts > for @font-face web > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Cc: Dave Crossland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > On Tuesday 11 November 2008, Dave Crossland wrote: >> Hi! >> >> Last week, "Hendry" asked on IRC if the DejaVu TTF were on a central >> website so that they would be easily linkable via @font-face CSS. > > Nope, sourceforge doesn't allow direct linking of files (it can only go > through their file release system), so we need another location like > OFLB. > > btw, wasn't there a built-in restriction for font linking in the > browsers that support @font-face which limits font linking to the same > domain as the webpage? > > Ben > > > > > -- Forwarded message -- > From: Dave Crossland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: 2008/11/14 > Subject: Re: [DejaVu-fonts] Open Font Library wants to host your fonts > for @font-face web > To: Ben Laenen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > 2008/11/11 Ben Laenen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >> >> btw, wasn't there a built-in restriction for font linking in the >> browsers that support @font-face which limits font linking to the same >> domain as the webpage? > > Firefox has this, and sites must configure their HTTPDs if they want > to allow cross-site fonts. OFLB will do this as soon as FF implements > the feature (currently its turned on and can only be turned off by > users configuring FF to not do it always, but thats because its in > development) >
Re: [OpenFontLibrary] Site statistics
Hi, Dave & Ben, I got the "keyTreeMap" class needed for the virtual keyboard integrated and working today. Now it needs testing! If you and Ben want to test, that would be a great help too. Of course I will also do a lot of testing myself. Testing of complex key maps is what is really needed. Any keymap that requires entering 2 or more keys before arriving at a mapping is "complex" by definition here. So French and many of the other European key maps are in fact complex. For example, in the French keymap, you must enter "E$" (2 keys) to get " €". Maps where entering one Qwerty key maps to one target letter are not complex. For example, the Thai key map is not a complex map, because there are only 1-to-1 mappings. Using French as an example, what is supposed to happen is this: * If you type a "c", the background changes color while waiting for additional input because the virtual keyboard will wait to see if you type "c;" for c-cedilla. * If you don't type ";", then the background reverts to white because it is no longer waiting for follow-on characters. * If you then type "o" followed by "e", you get "œ". Background color should actually change after the o, but doesn't -- must be a bug, but at least the mapping works correctly. * If you type "u", the background changes because you can have u with umlaut or u with a hat (^) in french, so it waits to see what you type next. * if you type an "r", then you will have arrived at the french word "cœur". * So far, this is no different than what I had working a few days ago, except for the color. But now really complex maps like Devanagari should also work correctly and they definitely did not before. What makes Devanagari and some others really complex is that you can have 1-to-1, 2-to-1, 3-to-1, 4-to-1, 5-to-1, and maybe even greater n-to-1 mappings all in one key map. Maps like Devanagari are the ones that really require careful testing: http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/gci/keyboard.php Also, do you think having the background change color to indicate that the keyboard is waiting for more input is a good idea or not? Let me know if you uncover strange bugs. Best - Ed On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 6:18 PM, Dave Crossland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi! > > We now have site statistics! > > https://awstats.osuosl.org/list/openfontlibrary.org > > Search keywords are interesting: > > https://awstats.osuosl.org/reports/openfontlibrary.org/2008/11/awstats.openfontlibrary.org.keyphrases.xml > > As are referrer pages: > > https://awstats.osuosl.org/reports/openfontlibrary.org/2008/11/awstats.openfontlibrary.org.refererpages.xml > > :-) >
Re: [Openfontlibrary] design service
Hi, Jeremy, Others on this list may provide you with other answers. So please accept my suggestion as just one of several possibilities: As people begin uploading fonts, we discover some Latin fonts that contain not much more than basic Latin A-Z. To make these fonts really usable, it would be great if knowledgeable type designers helped out by adding the basic accented Latin letters required for pan-European usage first, and eventually an even larger set of Latin letters needed for additional Latin-based orthographies, such as Vietnamese, some of the American Indian language orthographies, and various African language orthographies. Another problem we may see is that even in OpenType fonts with kerning pairs, kerning pairs may only be present for the basic Latin letters, and not yet for the extended and accented Latin letters. So, depending on your level of experience, helping to fill out some of the existing fonts which appeal to you stylistically by adding accented and extended Latin glyphs, or by adding OpenType kerning features, may be a fairly entertaining way to get your feet wet initially. Best Wishes -- Ed Trager On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 11:10 AM, jeremy schorderet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>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? > > > hope to hear from you soon! > > > jeremy > > ___ > Openfontlibrary mailing list > Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org > http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary > > ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] Non-Copyleft Openfontlibrary
Hi, Chris, > > Releasing a font under GPL or OFL license simply ensures the font can > freely be used or modified by anyone and that no one can claim > proprietary or commercial rights. > > If somebody does want a similar font to sell under a commercial license > I'm perfectly willing to develop one for them for a fair price. > Regarding "no one can claim proprietary or commercial rights," I believe that is actually not quite the case under U.S. copyright law, as I understand it. As the original font author, I believe that you yourself have the right to sell your own font under as many different licenses as you want, commercial as well as FLOSS. "Dual Licensing" appears to be becoming fairly common in the FLOSS software world. Commercial entities often ask for a commercial license from FLOSS vendors because their lawyers like that better, I guess. Maybe it is the liability thing -- a commercial entity does not want to be accused of "stealing" someone's software or font, open source or otherwise, so they want to negotiate payment for use. So you actually don't have to develop a separate font -- you can use the same one you have already developed and sell it if you have buyers. For something like Jomolhari, I'm sure there is a market. Best - Ed ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] ccHost compression
Hi, Brendan, The PHP getId3() library is at http://getid3.sourceforge.net/. It might be worth looking into how to expand this library to recognize the TTF and OTF file headers, perhaps? The idea here seems quite similar to what the *Nix "file" command does. If someone were to look at the *nix "file" command source code, I bet you could fairly easily find a reference to the "magic" file header bytes that are used to detect TTF/OTF files and then add this to the getId3() stuff, assuming that getId3() is well-written. - Ed On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 2:06 PM, Brendan Ferguson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Could you point me to the page for this script? I would like to read > more about it. > ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] Non-Copyleft Openfontlibrary
Hi, FontFreedom, > ... but I really want to have a non-copyleft > openfontlibrary. Why? If we are not using "copyleft" licenses, what are you proposing to use in place? The whole reason for copyright law is to provide legal protections to authors of creative works, is it not? We now have enthusiastic communities of authors who recognize the value of giving back to the community, of sharing and remixing creative works. Licenses like SIL's OFL license for fonts have been designed specifically to help these authors protect their works so that they can do what they really want to do with them -- share them with the community! The right to share a work with others is just as much a legal right as the right to not share a work. The license makes this clear. And, BTW, the original author of a work is, at least under U.S. law as I understand it, free to release his or her work under as many or as few different licenses as s/he wants. So, for example, I could release an original font creation under OFL for the community to use, and still sell it under a commercial license for customers who may want some form of paid support or other service in return for payment. So licenses like the OFL provide clarity in terms of what authors want to allow or disallow. "Public Domain" on the other hand seems to me very fuzzy and unclear. What legal rights are reserved or not reserved? It's not clear to me. What are the author's wishes? Heck, who even *is* the author of a "Public Domain" font? Maybe if we knew who the author or authors really are, we would find out that they don't want their fonts under "Public Domain" once they recognize the advantages and legal protections that copyright law is supposed to provide. I therefore personally think that "Public Domain" should be discouraged. I certainly would not put anything I created under "Public Domain". I would much rather put it under a license that makes it very clear that I want to share my work with the community. - Ed Trager ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] ccHost compression
One can always change a file name extension to something else, so testing against the file extension is probably not useful. PHP's $_FILES['userfile']['type'] will indicate the file's mime type if provided by the browser, but I don't know how browsers determine the mime type for uploaded files. The *nix "file" command reads the file headers and determines file type based on the pattern of bytes in the headers of files -- that is the most reliable way to do it. But again, I don't know if browsers use a similar method or not. - Ed > I think a exclude list is better than an include list - that is, we > should exclude files with .exe .php and so on, and include any files > not matching this ban-list. ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] The Next Version of OFLB
Hi, Dave, I took only a quick look at the TODO wiki page you mentioned: > Default tags for upload pages- do we want more than: african, arabic, asian, > cyrillic, fantasy, latin, monospace, sans_serif, script, serif, symbol Yes. I'm not sure what "default tags for upload pages" actually means, but I think the list of categories is not yet completely thought-out ... One question I have is will it be possible to have multiple tags on one font, say if I want to upload an "African" "sans-serif" font? For the geographic categories, I would have something much more along the lines of what I have got on http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/NewUnifontDesign2/ (which, for those who haven't seen this yet, is an incomplete revision of my unifont.org font guide): * The Americas : Fonts for Indigenous American languages : Includes Latin, Cherokee, and Unified Canadian Syllabic orthography fonts. * African: Includes Latin and indigenous non-Latin orthography fonts. Since Arabic is used extensively in North Africa, a note alerts users that Arabic fonts are included in the Middle East section. * Middle East includes at least Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac. * Europe has Latin, Latin & Greek, LGC, Armenian, and Georgian sub-categories. * Central Asia has Tibetan, Uyghur (which is really an Arabic orthography), and Mongolian. It could also conceivably have a Cyrillic sub-category. * South Asia would be for the fonts covering the major orthographies of India. * Southeast Asia covers the many Indic-derived orthographies, as well as Latin-based orthographies such as Vietnamese * East Asia: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Yi. I won't elaborate on the style categories at this point -- those may also require more thought and additional categories. >> the file itself). Something like: >> url(http://openfontlibrary.org/people/benweiner/2.0/Puritan_Regular.otf) >> url(http://openfontlibrary.org/people/benweiner/Puritan_Regular-2.0.otf) For the URL format, should it not be something more like the following instead?: http://openfontlibrary.org/people/benweiner/Puritan_Regular/2.0/Puritan_Regular-2.0.otf - Ed ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] typography.js from http://typeface.neocracy.org/
I agree with Chris 100%. When I took a look at the http://typeface.neocracy.org/ project and code, I was surprised at all the work they had put in to it. One problem with this approach is that it is so temporary -- as soon as @font-face becomes more widely supported, their solution will be largely obsolete. The other and bigger problem, as Chris pointed out, is there is no support for complex text layout. So they have all of this nicely written code with complete workarounds for both CANVAS and VML, and perhaps one year from now it will remain largely unused. - Ed On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 12:19 PM, Christopher Fynn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Dave Crossland wrote: > > > Do you think _not_ supporting things like that .js will help speed > > @font-face adoption? > > As much as possible, I'd like to see efforts *focused* on getting > widespread support for @font-face. > > As I see it partial solutions can remove some of the pressure for a more > comprehensive solution. > > I'm also not very keen on any font linking and embedding method that > doesn't support the needs of users of non-latin scripts - and in > particular the needs of users of complex (e.g. arabic & indic) scripts. > IMO, in this day and age, any font architecture which doesn't take > account of complex scripts is broken. > > > - Chris > > > > > > > ___ > Openfontlibrary mailing list > Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org > http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary > ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] Font formats accepted by OFLB
Hi, Ben, Someone has written a PHP class that handles ZIP/ GZIP / BZIP2 compression and decompression: http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/package/945.html I will take a look at this as soon as I get a chance and see what I think. IMO, the best answer would be to seamlessly support all of the popular compression formats automatically. (This would possibly also include 7Zip which may not currently be in the above-mentioned class). In a C++ program that I and a couple of colleagues wrote a couple of years ago (unrelated to typography), we did exactly this kind of thing. That is, we automatically supported compressed file packages. We read enough of the file headers to be able to detect which file format needed to be read, and then called the appropriate decompression library. This solution was very nice -- we could throw almost any sort of file at the program, and it just worked. Best - Ed On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 10:33 AM, Ben Weiner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > Ben Laenen wrote: >> 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. > Never ;-) > > Although that sounds a bit like an archive to me :-) >> 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. >> > Aha! Source. Nobody's come back to me on that. I know humans can read > .sfd files. What about the 'source' files used by other font-authoring > applications? Do we accept these even thought they're not amenable to > reuse except by people who also own that software? > > If we do decide to accept them, can someone provide a 'Hello > Typographical World' example file for each? I can do Macromedia > Fontographer from my deep-stored Mac OS 8 box, but none of the others. >> If ccHost cannot handle zipped files, then too bad. > It can certainly handle them. What it doesn't do is make them usefully > available in their unscrambled form. It's also not very deft with > tarballs - although it'll accept them by default, you cannot find out > what's inside them (without a plugin of some sort from the future, AFAIK). > > Incidentally, there is no reason why what I'm informally calling the > 'typeface record' (the basic unit of ccHosting as applied to fonts, eg > http://openfontlibrary.org/media/files/OSP/322) should not possess a mix > of compiled fonts and zipped resources such as the source files and > readmes. Anyone think that's a good idea? > > Cheers, > Ben > ___ > Openfontlibrary mailing list > Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org > http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary > ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] Font formats accepted by OFLB
Hi, Ben, Don't forget .ttc true type collections. These will become more popular in the future, I am sure. I second Mark Leisher's suggestion to accept pcf and bdf. Some people are going to provide one font in multiple font containers: i.e., maybe ttf and pcf, or ttf and Postscript. But I agree with you that the older Postscript containers are not needed since OTF can contain Postscript outlines, right? Ben Laenen's question is relevant. Perhaps the right tack is for OFLB to simply "encourage" inclusion of "at least" a ttf container. Note however there are legitimate use cases where .bdf or .pcf might be the first choice container -- for example, a monospaced bitmap terminal font for Linux, especially for a non-Latin script where there might not be other choices available. Such a bitmap-only font should also be packaged in a TTF container, but the main file that will actually get used by people interested in that font is the bdf or pcf file. Best - Ed On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 12:00 PM, Ben Weiner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi there, > > My proposal for OFLB font uploads in the next version of the site is to > accept > > .otf > .ttf > > which are far and away going to be the most widely appreciated, then > > .pfa > .pfm > .pfb > .afm > .bdf > > which are Adobe-ish formats that are all in the current site: are they > all needed? > > Then the X-Windows format, if it is still in use: > .pcf > > Then humna-readable source: > .sfd > > What else? Metafont files (?.mf)? > > A short list is better, I think. Suggestions? > > Thanks, > Ben > > ___ > Openfontlibrary mailing list > Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org > http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] SVG Fonts as a replacement for EOT?
Hi, Dave, I don't have time to look at how they are doing this specifically. I previously thought about doing a similar thing. In my version, I was going to have a C++ program on the server using Pango and Freetype to get at the glyph outlines and then just spit out the outlines as SVG vectors. I wasn't even going to use the SVG font specification -- just plain SVG graphics. But of course I never got around to doing it. So instead I wrote the version that spits out PNG files using Cairo -- PNG files provide a cross-browser solution while SVG does not. In a similar vein, one can also imagine a program that would generate CANVAS graphics. Combined with Google's CANVAS-to-IE-VML javascript package, such a contrivance could probably be cross-browser. But why bother? Liam says you can now embed a CFF font in an SVG document, but it sounds like only the Adobe plugin actually support that -- and even then, does it really support the advanced OpenType features needed for many scripts and orthographies? I kind of doubt it ... The better solution is to have browser support for the @font-face rules. That way the browser can take advantage of either Freetype-Pango-HarfBuzz-Cairo or the OS' native support for OpenType features. And maybe someday we will also have Graphite integration in the FOSS type rendering stack too, which would also be very beneficial. With WebKit under the hood, Google's Chrome browser will be easily able to support @font-face as soon as the developers decide to turn this feature on. So then we will have Safari and Chrome with @font-face support. And doesn't Opera have it too? We'll have to see where Firefox falls out on this -- I don't currently understand the state of progress on @font-face support in FF. In any case, as George Williams points out, Dojo's solution doesn't change anything on the licensing front. Is the Dojo developer Tom Trenka really suggesting that their SVG solution avoids licensing issues? If so, I wonder what he was smoking? Best - Ed Trager On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 4:36 AM, Dave Crossland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > Those smart dojotoolkit guys have been thinking about web fonts and > come up with some very clever stuff :-) > > http://www.sitepen.com/blog/2008/09/08/custom-fonts-with-dojoxgfx/ > > Here's the 'serious' demo: > > http://archive.dojotoolkit.org/nightly/dojotoolkit/demos/fonts/demo.html > > And here's the 'fun' demo which I think has A LOT of potential for OFLB: > > http://archive.dojotoolkit.org/nightly/dojotoolkit/demos/fonts/comic.html > > I guess its not as internationalised as Ed Trager's stuff, but it > might complement them, for example giving charts of charset coverages: > > http://archive.dojotoolkit.org/nightly/dojotoolkit/demos/fonts/charts.html > > -- > Regards, > Dave > ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] Web Fonts
The Wiki page indicates that it will load the fonts but not currently display them. On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 9:13 PM, Christopher Fynn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Since Google's Chrome browser uses Webkit does this mean it supports > CSS "font embedding"? > > > > > ___ > Openfontlibrary mailing list > Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org > http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary > ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] Generating Font Samples
Hi, Chris and everyone, KDE includes a set of "Quick Brown Fox"-type pangrams for many different language locales. Checking out the i18n repository from KDE would be one way to make a very quick start on a such a database. Best - Ed On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 1:55 AM, Christopher Fynn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > For generating font samples it might be useful to compile a set of "Quick > brown fox" type phrases in Unicode for different languages and scripts. > > Often when I go to look at a sample for an Indic script font all I get from > the application generating the sample is a sample showing me the Latin > glyphs that may be included in the font - and, when looking at examples of > say Devanagri fonts, I'm not that interested in the Latin glyphs in those > fonts. > > - Chris > > > > ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] Generating Font Samples
Hi, Denis et al., Of course fontconfig's "fc-list" utility already provides most of this kind of functionality, i.e., ~> fc-list :lang=ja IPAUIGothic,IPA UIゴシック:style=Regular Unicode BMP Fallback SIL,Spanish Unicode BMP Fallback SIL:style=Regular Sazanami Mincho,さざなみ明朝:style=Mincho-Regular,Regular WenQuanYi Zen Hei,文泉驛正黑,文泉驿正黑:style=Medium,中等 ... Continuing the discussion about creating an interactive fonts web site, it would not be difficult to have a PHP, Python, or similar web-based application just call fc-list to query which fonts supported a given orthography. As the fc-list output above suggests, human interpretation of the result set is still needed. SIL's "Unicode BMP Fallback" does have a glyph for every Japanese character, but would not really be a readable choice for Japanese. WenQuanYi Zen Hei also has Japanese characters, but Japanese people may dislike the glyph styles since WenQuanYi is really a Chinese font. Nevertheless, using fc-list as an off-the-shelf solution to start with makes sense. Best -- Ed On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 1:18 PM, Denis Jacquerye <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > I'd be interested to implement a way to match fonts by what language > they support. > > Cheers, > > Denis Moyogo Jacquerye > > 2008/5/21 Dave Crossland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >> 2008/5/21 Ed Trager <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >>> >>> IMHO, anything less than this kind of interactivity no longer makes >>> the grade (it goes without saying that the current OFLB site just >>> fails completely). >> >> I agree that we ought to aim for that level of functionality :-) >> >> But, as always, we are so few (and those of us who know who to program >> web-based applications even fewer) and so I really look forward to >> seeing your code being released, and hope it can be integrated into >> ccHost 5 :-) >> >> -- >> Regards, >> Dave >> >> I support www.gnuherds.org - >> democratic free software jobs >> ___ >> Openfontlibrary mailing list >> Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org >> http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary >> > > -- > Denis Moyogo Jacquerye --- http://home.sus.mcgill.ca/~moyogo > Nkótá ya Kongó míbalé --- http://info-langues-congo.1sd.org/ > DejaVu fonts --- http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/ > Unicode (UTF-8) > ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] Generating Font Samples
Hi, everyone, >> George Williams wrote: > The biggest issue I have is and has always been the lack of font > samples. When I open the main page I see a year old piece of "olds". I > don't see anything that makes me want to look deeper. At least a font > image that changes every week (or something) would be better. > Everyone should take a look at the commercial http://myfonts.com to see a good implementation of modern Web 2.0 interactivity on a fonts site. When one types a string into a text box at the top of the page, a whole slew of font sample PNG images are updated on-the-fly using AJAX. This is really quite helpful. search for "Irish" fonts on myfonts.com, and you will see the query result set naturally contains many fonts -- but unfortunately many of those fonts don't contain the accented Latin glyphs actually needed for Irish orthography like "Áḋaiṁ" -- and this is instantly apparent to the user. So you can instantly see whether a certain font will meet your graphic as well as orthographic needs. IMHO, anything less than this kind of interactivity no longer makes the grade (it goes without saying that the current OFLB site just fails completely). George Williams' aforementioned fontimage ( http://fontforge.sf.net/fontimage.html ) already provides one option for server-side generation of the font samples. George, can you tell me if fontimage uses Pango or some other library to handle non-Latin and complex layout scripts? Coincidentally, just yesterday I got bored working on something at work, so I decided to take a break and work on a little Pango-Cairo-based utility quite similar in principle to George's fontimage. When completed, I plan to use my utility on some sort of AJAXified page on http://unifont.org. My plan is to create something at least as good as what myfonts.com has, if not better (as they say, copying is the sincerest form of flattery ... ). Using Pango-Cairo guarantees that the utility will work for complex scripts like Arabic and Thai, a necessity for the unifont.org site. My Pango-Cairo code is quite straightforward and I will release it when I am done. For my version, I decided that I should modify the fontconfig ".fonts.conf" file so that my utility will (via fontconfig) end up using SIL "Unicode BMP Fallback" font for missing glyphs. Using the aforementioned "Áḋaiṁ" string as an example, output from my utility looks fine for Gentium which of course has all the necessary glyphs, but shows that the Greek MgOpen Moderna and Modata just won't be useable for Irish: http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/pango-cairo/gentium.png http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/pango-cairo/moderna.png http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/pango-cairo/modata.png If done right, the "instant feedback" provided by AJAXified font web sites may help foster community involvement in filling in the missing glyphs required for better orthographic coverage in Open community fonts. Best - Ed Trager ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] I did a talk on Font Designing !
Hi, Hiran, Nice presentation! I am curious to know whether you will expand your font design to include accented Latin letters in the future? Best Wishes -- Ed On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 9:37 AM, H <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > It was at fossmeet.in at NITC I took a talk on font designing. > Here is the blog : http://hiraneffects.blogspot.com/2008/04/su > nny-fossevent-funny-exam.html > and the slide http://hiran.v.googlepages.com/lmb.pdf > > do comment! > > -- > H > > WARNING :The opinions expressed above are yours. They are not necessarily > those of my employer or myself. > hiraneffects.blogspot.com | 91.9846951870 | IRC Nick/ Freenode :HFactor [ c > u @ #smc-project | #sugar | #python] > > ___ > Openfontlibrary mailing list > Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org > http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary > > ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
[Openfontlibrary] New Option for Text Layout Meeting 2008 Venue ... Please VOTE for your preference
(This message is being intentionally cross-posted on the HarfBuzz, SIL Graphite, and OFLB discussion lists in order to reach all of you who are interested in this year's Free Desktop Text Layout Working Group's meeting (TLM 2008) ). Hi everyone, The Linux Foundation (LF) Collaboration Summit will be held this year from Tuesday APRIL 8 to Thursday April 10 in AUSTIN, Texas, USA. The LF folks would be happy to host TLM 2008 in conjunction with this year's LF Collaboration Summit.. This is a NEW option --which includes the important possibility of better funding-- which we were not aware of earlier. We have to date only seriously considered TLM 2008 as part of the Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM) in Wrocław. I therefore would like to gauge the community's response to this new option. What are people's preferences? : [ ] TLM at LFCS in AUSTIN in APRIL 2008 is better ... [ ] TLM at LGM in WROCŁAW in MAY 2008 is better ... Please feel free to include WHY you think one venue is better than the other (both personal preferences and community synergies are valid considerations, IMO). I'm planning to talk with Jim Zemlin of LF this coming Monday, so any responses I could receive by then would be great. Thanks! Best Wishes -- Ed Trager http://unifont.org ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] A tool which help creating font with a lot of glyphs.
Hi, everyone, The other day I ran across Yannis Haralambous' "Fonts and Encodings", translated by P. Scott Horne, in a local Borders bookstore here in the U.S. (O'Reilly, September 2007) This massive tome is a fantastic piece of work. Not only does the book provide very in-depth coverage of Unicode extending very much beyond the topic of "fonts" per se, the author also provides an excellent section on the history and development of typography since Gutenberg -- That section alone could justifiably stand as an independent book all by itself. Coverage of Font Lab and FontForge are also provided. And it appears that Haralambous has brought to light many little-known aspects and details of Unicode in a thorougly enjoyable read. Judging by the excellent content, I feel the title on the cover of the book is a bit uninformative: a better title would have been "Fonts and the Unicode Revolution" or something dramatic like that. This "brain dump" from Yannis Haralambous is really great and Horne seems to have done an excellent job on the English translation (although I have not yet seen the French language original). I encourage everyone to check it out: http://www.amazon.com/Fonts-Encodings-Yannis-Haralambous/dp/0596102429/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199801262&sr=8-1 Here is the original French language title (O'Reilly, April 2004): http://www.amazon.fr/Fontes-Codages-Yannis-Haralambous/dp/284177273X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199802443&sr=1-1 Happy New Year to everyone - Ed Trager ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] TextLayout summit links + text Rasterization article
On 7/9/07, Nicolas Spalinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi everyone, > > In case you haven't seen it yet, the papers/slides of the TextLayout > Summit (along with recordings) are available on > http://unifont.org/TextLayout2007/ > Except the video is not ready yet. We have video for all of the afternoon discussions and will get this up as soon as possible. Best - Ed > > And this article on Text Rasterization has some useful ideas: > http://antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/index.html > > Bye, > > > -- > Nicolas Spalinger > http://scripts.sil.org > http://pkg-fonts.alioth.debian.org/ > https://launchpad.net/people/fonts > > > > > ___ > Openfontlibrary mailing list > Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org > http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary > > > ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] Re: NEW FEATURE: Open Font License 1.1 Support!
Hi all, IMHO something like Ed's font playground technologies would be very cool: http://retina.ophthy.med.umich.edu/fontplayground/ I've just recently been looking at Cairo and Cairo+Pango integration and I think I will in the very near future be capable of providing a technically much cleaner and more sophisticated version of "Font Playground". The current Font Playground backend on the retina URL is very much a hack of a bunch of stuff --good for proof-of-concept but the code is *not* pretty to look at. A Cairo+Pango version of FontPlayground could provide a very nice solution for the backend. Just as in the current version of Font Playground, AJAX is a must on the front-end. I Just hope no one is in a great rush as my time is currently split among a lot of other projects. - Ed Trager > Cheers! > > Jon -- Nicolas Spalinger http://scripts.sil.org http://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-fonts/ https://launchpad.net/~fonts ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] looking for corefonts replacements, how to replace?, and site search
Hi, Denis, A good subsitute would have original designs for glyphs but the same metrics as the non-free font it aims to replace. The Bitstream Vera set of fonts actually have different metrics than the corresponding MS Core fonts, right? There was a post on the this list about somebody I think in Australia who has taken the Bitstream set and changed the font metrics to match MS Core font metrics. How "bad" is that, I wonder? How different are they? Also, has the Deja Vu project changed the overall font metrics at all, I wonder, to accomodate all of those extended Latin and other added characters? Many people are interested in the issue of "document fidelity" -- where, for example, pagination of a document does not change across OSes. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that there are some well-known commercial fonts that also have the same font metrics -but different glyph designs- as some other better known commercial fonts. Presumably the reasoning is the same: to allow drop-in substitution of the alternate font while still retaining "document fidelity". I wonder who has solid information on this issue? Best - Ed Trager ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] Re: [DejaVu-fonts] forming new maintenance team for MPH 2B Damase?
Hi, Jon, Victor Gaultney's investigation of this font, as reported in an earlier email, clearly shows that this font contains exact copies of other people's glyphs where the permission for such copying is not clear at all. To me, that suggests this font is a legal can of worms that you should not be so quick to jump on. If OFLB decides to use it, OFLB will have to investigate every single glyph, and will have to cut out all of those where permission for use cannot be obtained. That might be a lot of glyphs. - Ed On 2/11/07, Jon Phillips <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Sure, we could host it as part of Open Font Library so we can all make revisions, derivatives, etc. Would that interest you all? This will help our community as well to get sorted with packaging and some other features... Jon ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] Re: [DejaVu-fonts] forming new maintenance team for MPH 2B Damase?
Hi, Mark, I wanted to reply to your question about why copyright? First, I am not a lawyer. So really you would be best to ask a lawyer, especially a lawyer familiar with FLOSS. Maybe the FSF's lawyer, Eben Moglen, would be willing to advise on the benefits of "copyright" vs. "public domain" ... It seems to me that if you copyright your original intellectual property in that font, that gives everyone a certain peace of mind because you've publically acknowledged your creation. Those aren't just any glyphs picked up off the streets, they're your glyphs. Then you can license them under whatever license you like. You can still say "Copyright (c) Mark Williamson. Released under a license that allows you to do whatever you want with them." Best Wishes - Ed On 2/11/07, Mark Williamson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I'm also just a bit curious as to why someone thinks I should claim copyright of the font and release it under a free license. Cheers Mark On 11/02/07, Jon Phillips <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sun, 2007-02-11 at 20:10 +1100, Paul Wise wrote: > > On Sat, 2007-02-10 at 20:26 -0800, Ed Trager wrote: > > > > > Wouldn't it be better if you as the original author claimed the > > > copyright on it, and put the kind of license on it that you would > > > prefer (BSD or whatever)? > > > > Sorry, there must be some confusion, I am not the original author, I'm > > just the maintainer of the Debian package. > > > > > Then a group could form a project around your font just the same, but > > > now would be able to respect your wishes as regards licensing with no > > > ambiguities or future contentions? > > > > As I'm not the author, my wishes are pretty irrelevant :) > > What I wrote before about licencing was just my own opinion. > > > > Mark Williamson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> is the author and he released it > > into the public domain, I'm assuming that is the licencing he preferred > > for that font (he released another font MPH Yangon under the GPL), > > although I haven't really discussed licencing with him. I'd suggest > > anyone wanting to clarify his wishes wrt licencing please contact him. > > > > Apart from the licencing stuff, is anyone interested in being part of > > the group to work on MPH 2B Damase? > > > > Sure, we could host it as part of Open Font Library so we can all make > revisions, derivatives, etc. Would that interest you all? > > This will help our community as well to get sorted with packaging and > some other features... > > Jon > > -- > Jon Phillips > > San Francisco, CA > USA PH 510.499.0894 > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.rejon.org > > MSN, AIM, Yahoo Chat: kidproto > Jabber Chat: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > IRC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > -- Refije dirije lanmè yo paske nou posede pwòp bato. ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] Re: [DejaVu-fonts] forming new maintenance team for MPH 2B Damase?
Hi, Paul, Wouldn't it be better if you as the original author claimed the copyright on it, and put the kind of license on it that you would prefer (BSD or whatever)? Then a group could form a project around your font just the same, but now would be able to respect your wishes as regards licensing with no ambiguities or future contentions? - Ed Trager On 2/10/07, Paul Wise <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Sun, 2007-02-11 at 10:28 +0800, Simos Xenitellis wrote: > MPH 2B Damase does not have a free and open-source license. I was > wondering if the author would be flexible to relicense using a license > such as OFL. There is no copyright, no licence, it is public domain. Therefore you can do anything you could with any free and open-source licence, and more, including claim copyright over it and re-licence it to the OFL if you so choose. I'd really suggest that a much more permissive licence (BSD/MIT/Expat) is used if someone decides to claim copyright over it and or any changes made and choose a licence. I think public domain is just as good a "licence" as any free font licence. It was pointed out that one option would be to simply import the glyphs/etc into another font (such as DejaVu) instead of keeping MPH 2B Damase as a separate project/font. Obviously in such a situation the glyphs/etc would be re-licenced to the same licence as the font they were imported into. If you wish to verify that the font really is in the public domain and that the author did not take the glyphs from some other source, please read the debian Intent To Package bug[1] or contact the author (Mark). 1. http://bugs.debian.org/306290 -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] Libre Graphics Meeting 2, 4-5-6 May 2007, in Montreal
Thanks, Dave, for bringing this to my attention. Montreal isn't too far from where I am in North America, so I'll look into the possibility of attending the meeting. - Ed On 2/9/07, Dave Crossland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Hi, Will anyone here be attending the Libre Graphics Meeting 2? I just saw that the www.libregraphicsmeeting.org website has been updated with a great new look. Would anyone be interested in working on a presentation of the OFLB there with me? -- Regards, Dave ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] FOSS and the Commercial Print World
the best FLOSS font projects already provide PDF proof sheets : the Libertine Open Font project (http://linuxlibertine.sourceforge.net/) and Gentium (http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=Gentium_samples) are premier examples that set the standard. When people contact me to have their fonts included on unifont.org, I now routinely recommend that they need to have extended font previews --either as images or as PDFs -- on their font sites. So, in my mind, what OFLB should do is provide a set of guidelines for people who want to upload their fonts to this repository: "You must provide a) Font name and complete authorship and design credits information in such-and-such a format, b) Clear license information in such-and-such a format c) A font preview of such-and-such a size, d) Font glyph and Unicode block coverage information in such-and-such a format, d) At least one proof sheet in such-and-such PDF format ... " If OFLB *first* provides good supporting infrastructure and a serious set of guidelines which clearly show the professional nature of the site, then I think the professional and aspiring amateur typographers alike may find OFLB interesting. Over time, people will then naturally want to put their fonts up on OFLB. Until you do that, however, I think you really have nothing. Just my opinion -- Ed Trager ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
Re: [Openfontlibrary] clarification...
Hi, Gustavo and Rob and everyone, > charged my ms, adobe etc are very high, while the value of design here is lower than in central > countries. most design businesses would break if they would pay for (all) licenses. Gustavo, I think you just have to make your type business global. Of course, with a good web site, some good fonts, and some good publicity within the type community, you can certainly do that! Then you just sell your commercial fonts in Europe, Japan, the US and Canada and don't have to worry about whether local markets in Brazil and elsewhere in South America are ready to pay for your stuff or not. One of the virtues claimed for "Open Source" development is that it reduces prices. This affects producers as well as consumers. I've been recently reading the book, "Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything" by Tapscott and Williams ( http://www.amazon.com/Wikinomics-Mass-Collaboration-Changes-Everything/dp/1591841380/sr=8-1/qid=1169920852/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-9872795-0805711?ie=UTF8&s=books ). I highly recommend this book to everyone on this list. Although all of you will already know many things that this book talks about, still it will give you a wider perspective on the impact of FLOSS in the wider world of business. Returning to the topic of struggling independent font designers trying to make a buck or a euro --there is a connection here with a number of things mentioned in the Wikinomics book-- It seems to me this is not that much different than, say, a struggling musician who wants to make his or her music known. Smart musicians these days publish some of their musical tracks for free on the internet, on places like MySpace or whatever -- I would have to ask my teenage daughter which sites are the most popular. Anyway, giving away your music for free is like free advertising. Eventually these musicians, if they are truly good, gain an audience. Then they can start selling their CDs for money. It is a certain fact that many of these artists would have *never* become known if internet communities like MySpace did not exist. Never ever. A point made clear in Wikinomics is that "open sourcing" some of your work --no matter what it is-- can always be viewed as good publicity, good corporate or community citizenship, and so on ... Eventually people say, "Hey, I like this group's work! It's very good. Sure, I'll by his CD!" Is the case for fonts as artistic creations really any different? I should think not. An independent typographer gives some of his stuff away for free under whatever license he or she feels is appropriate. Maybe he or she tries to hook up and get some publicity on a big commercial site like MyFonts.com. Maybe he or she decides to release fonts under a dual license -- free for non-commercial use, but please pay me if you are a commercial entity and want to use my fonts in a book or magazine. Eventually he or she gains a positive reputation in the community, and then the business can take off based on referrals, custom work, some commercial releases, etc. There is a contradiction in your business model, though. You cannot use Open Source to reduce your costs and avoid the value of your own work being reduced by Open Source. I have to disagree with this statement! To the contrary, I think that it *is* quite possible to use Open Source to reduce your "advertising" and "publicity" costs -- and you can still sell your work for some money too. Not the over-priced prices that a MS or Adobe charge, but for something that is more realistic in a market where many more things are now commodities. And you can end up making more money than you ever would have if you had decided to never "open source" some of your work. That Open Source community is very likely exactly the ticket to get you name recognition and market share without having a big advertising budget. So in the end, if you are good, sure you can make even more money than you ever could in the old world before the internet was here. But I think you have to really think through your business model. > copyright is very important for me as a (type-)designer. without respect for copyrights, there is no > type-business; if people use my work and i don't get anything for it, my business breaks. when i try > to talk about copyright and licensing here, people come with the argument "but i can't afford that, > poor me blablabla"... Personally, I very much like the business models that I see companies like Trolltech and Codeweavers pursuing. Both of these are software companies: Trolltech makes QT, the GUI toolkit at the root of KDE. If you are a FLOSS developer creating FLOSS products, you can just go and download the Open Source version of QT under the "QPL" or "GPL" license. But if you are developing commercial software, then you have to pay for a commercial license for what is, essentially, the very same product. With the commercial license, you also get support. And
Re: [Openfontlibrary] exljbris
Just my 2 cents : I agree with Gustavo's reply to Dave 100%. Honestly, a designer / author can do whatever they want. Authors of any kind of intellectual property (such as software or fonts) have a wide spectrum of options available. They can make it as completely free (libre), free (no-cost), open and modifiable as they want. Or they can make it as completely non-libre, costly, closed, and non-modifiable as they want. And they can do anything in between. In many cases, neither one of the two extremes is the best answer, and that's where something in the middle might be a better answer for some people and some specific set of circumstances. Those of us in the FLOSS software and FLOSS font communities will surely do best to recognize the plurality in the enterprises in which we are engaged, and the fact that it can be very beneficial to work with people of all stripes and circumstances. In addition, I would argue that our communities will benefit when members have a wide understanding of various economic and business models -- and the kinds of changes and impact that the FLOSS movement is having on traditional economic and business models. FLOSS is now becoming quite mainstream, even for very traditional businesses. It is now widely accepted that FLOSS has a role to play in any business that wishes to pursue a set of "best practices". But FLOSS is not the only game in town. Rather, it is becoming integrated into the larger ecosystem of how people do business -- and many aspects of traditional business models and traditional views regarding intellectual property and copyright still have their rightful place. On 1/26/07, Gustavo Ferreira <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: this is old, but i would like to make some comments: > Here's the non-free license information for these fonts. They are > very nice though! :-) > > > Font license information > > This font is free for personal and commercial use > > Awesome! > > > This font may not be modified > > Not so awesome :-( why not? i think this is a fair deal: the type-designer is letting you use his fonts for free, and he asks for your feedback so he can continue improving the font. > > This font may not be distributed -not online nor on any > > media- without my permission > > Not so awesome :-( why not? the type-designer gets public attention in exchange for letting everybody use his fonts without paying. note that he is not saying 'fonts may not be distributed' - he just wants to be able to have some control on that. i think this is fair. > > This font may not be sold > > Not so awesome :-( why not?! this guy has put a lot of effort in studying type-design, making these fonts and the website. why should others make profit from his hard work? sorry dave, but i think your comments just show a lack of comprehension for the designer's point of view... best, - gustavo. -- Original Message --- From: "Dave Crossland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org Sent: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 17:06:22 + Subject: Re: [Openfontlibrary] exljbris > Hi Gustavo! > > On 19/01/07, Gustavo Ferreira <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > http://www.josbuivenga.demon.nl/ > > Thanks for this - I've added it to the list of quality freeware fonts > at http://www.openfontlibrary.org/wiki/index.php/Existing_Free_Fonts > - I hope to ask the owners of these fonts to consider using the OFL when > the OFLB is functional and more attractive. > > Here's the non-free license information for these fonts. They are > very nice though! :-) > > > > Font license information > > > > > > [UTF-8?]• This font is free for personal and commercial use > > Awesome! > > > > [UTF-8?]• This font may not be modified > > Not so awesome :-( > > > > [UTF-8?]• This font may not be distributed -not online nor on any > > > media- without my permission > > Not so awesome :-( > > > > [UTF-8?]• This font may not be sold > > Not so awesome :-( > > > > [UTF-8?]• This font is the intellecual property of Jos Buivenga > > "Intellectual Property" is so vague that its meaningless. > > > > [UTF-8?]• Exljbris (Jos Buivenga) is not liable for any damage resulting from the use of this font > > Awesome! > > -- > Regards, > Dave --- End of Original Message --- --- End of Forwarded Message --- ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary ___ Openfontlibrary mailing list Openfontlibrary@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
