Peter R. Mueller-Roemer wrote:
wITH 'it' you refer to OpenType ? So OpentType are Type-faces= fonts that are only open by leaving technical details unrestricted to font-designers, text-processing-software?
Then it's name is another MISNOMER (the word Open can't be made proprietary by itself, so it is not illegal) that a lot of customers MISUNDERSTAND, and thus it is MISLEADING and unfair to your customers.
OpenType is a trademark of Microsoft and a proprietary font format jointly developed by Microsoft and Adobe. It was originally developed by MS as TrueType Open, and the name was changed to OpenType after Adobe became involved and the format embraced PostScript outline data. In both cases, the 'open' in the name refers to the fact that the format is extensible in terms of the amount and kind of layout intelligence built into the font. It is open compared to the earlier sfnt font format (TrueType).
'Open' in the OpenType name has never implied open in the sense of open source, a software phenomenon that only really became big news after the development of OpenType. I suspect, if the format were invented today, MS would have chosen some other name, since they are at pains to diassociate themselves from much open source software.
The Unicode-Standard I hope is Open in the sense that any font that is designed to this standard may call itself a unicode-font (complete or partial ...).
Unicode is a text encoding standard. Fonts and other software implement the standard. The 'openness' of the standard doesn't imply anything about the 'openness' of the software.
Unicode has a great potential to remove the language-specific boundaries from web-communication, but if allmost equivalent fonts (& SW to read, write and print) are not freely available for private use, than its accepance will not be so wide as is necessary to enable multi-lingual communication!
Font developers are under no obligation to provide you with free fonts. Do you not charge for your work? If you want fonts to be freely available, you have to find some way to pay for their development, e.g. the model of the SBL Font Foundation, which is raising funds from partner organisations to pay for free fonts for Biblical scholarship.
John Hudson
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Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Currently reading: The Peasant of the Garonne, by Jacques Maritain Art and faith, by Jacques Maritain & Jean Cocteau Difficulites, by Ronald Knox & Arnold Lunn
