[Openfontlibrary] Font File Type and Admins?

[George Williams]

On Wed, 2006-10-25 at 10:45, Dave Crossland wrote:
> I think we should support all formats. A friend of mine is big into
> bitmap fonts and I hope he'll contribute to the Free Font Movement, so
> it wouldn't be too good to exclude them.
I tend to agree that there should be some support for bitmap fonts.
However there are a huge number of bitmap formats, and I really don't
think this site should try to support all.

However, unlike outline fonts, nothing much is gained by this plethora
of formats.

My personal preference would be that all bitmap fonts be converted to
the X11 OpenType Bitmap format -- which is what you'd expect a bitmap
only font to look like if OpenType supported them. It's extension is
.otb.

There are various tools which can convert other formats to this one
(fontforge will, there are others out there).
> 
> In general I think Bitmap fonts is a relatively simple way of getting
> into font development, and is very cool, especially with screen-based
> designers.
> 
> The other formats are also quite obscure, 
Er...
Most fonts on a mac will be in Apple Advanced Typography. Though Apple
seems to be moving away from this. But the distinction between an Apple
ttf and OpenType ttf isn't obvious to the casual user.

Multi-Master is used heavily by Adobe -- internally. Many of their font
families appear to have multi-master sources. Those sources are not
released to the world. But Adobe clearly feels that there is value in
the format.

> 1. Use the OFL
> 2. Include the source files used to make the font
> 3. Include at least one compiled font binary
> 4. Include a thumbnail and type specimen sheet

> Should 2 include only source files for free software applications?
Does it include scanned images used for tracing, etc.?

On Wed, 2006-10-25 at 11:28, Raph Levien wrote: 
> Grayscale bitmap fonts are also interesting, but unfortunately tools
> to support their use are in poor shape. 
otb does support greyscale bitmaps.
ff can be used to create them, but only pixel by pixel, or by
rasterizing an outline. The first is painful, the second rather useless.

> for mirrored references and the like. Dave's suggestion of UFO is also
> plausible as a source format, but as far as I know it isn't widely
> used - certainly until FontForge has native support for it.
I'd been ignoring them since I didn't understand their utility and no
one had asked for them. If people want them I'll look at them again.

> And the best I can come up with so far on the slogan front is "fonts
> of freedom."
I thought "Type Casting" a rather good pun -- though unfortunately we
don't really cast metal anymore.