[Openfontlibrary] Openfontlibrary Digest, Vol 23, Issue 6
Antony Tomson
ap_tomson at yahoo.com
Fri Nov 16 05:19:37 PST 2007
----- Original Message ----
From: "openfontlibrary-request at lists.freedesktop.org" <openfontlibrary-request at lists.freedesktop.org>
To: openfontlibrary at lists.freedesktop.org
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2007 9:54:01 AM
Subject: Openfontlibrary Digest, Vol 23, Issue 6
Send Openfontlibrary mailing list submissions to
openfontlibrary at lists.freedesktop.org
To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
openfontlibrary-request at lists.freedesktop.org
You can reach the person managing the list at
openfontlibrary-owner at lists.freedesktop.org
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Openfontlibrary digest..."
Today's Topics:
1. Re: droid fonts (Christopher Fynn)
2. Re: droid fonts (Dave Crossland)
3. Re: fw: [Tipografia] [Gentium] Update #5 - Gentium Basic and
Gentium Book Basic available for testing (Dave Crossland)
4. Re: droid fonts (Christopher Fynn)
5. Re: droid fonts (Jon Phillips)
6. Re: droid fonts (Simos Xenitellis)
7. Re: droid fonts (Dave Crossland)
8. Re: droid fonts (Dave Crossland)
9. Re: droid fonts (Christopher Fynn)
10. Re: droid fonts (Dave Crossland)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 23:07:13 +0600
From: Christopher Fynn <cfynn at gmx.net>
Subject: Re: [Openfontlibrary] droid fonts
To: Openfontlibrary at lists.freedesktop.org
Message-ID: <473C7CC1.60402 at gmx.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Dave Crossland wrote:
...
> I read 'system fonts for the Android platform ... that will be made
> available under the Apache open source license' :-)
In this case I'd wait till you read the actual licence in the fonts.
Ascender is not particularly in the Free and OpenSource fonts camp...
see: http://www.ascendercorp.com/webfontstudy.html
They are also the marketing agents for Microsoft? fonts.
- Chris
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:09:57 +0000
From: "Dave Crossland" <dave at lab6.com>
Subject: Re: [Openfontlibrary] droid fonts
To: "Christopher Fynn" <cfynn at gmx.net>
Cc: Openfontlibrary at lists.freedesktop.org
Message-ID:
<2285a9d20711150909r12cb94b4pe8a436fbfbe19064 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
On 15/11/2007, Christopher Fynn <cfynn at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> In this case I'd wait till you read the actual licence in the fonts.
Yes; lots of chatter about how much freedom Google is giving with
these phones, since what is available now is totally proprietary. But
I hope they will release it under Apache 2. (GPLv3 compatible :-)
> Ascender is not particularly in the Free and OpenSource fonts camp...
> They are also the marketing agents for Microsoft(R) fonts.
Yes, this is true, but they did Red Hat's Liberation fonts too, so
they are more in the sofware-freedom camp then any other proprietary
foundry, afaik
--
Regards,
Dave
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:36:56 +0000
From: "Dave Crossland" <dave at lab6.com>
Subject: Re: [Openfontlibrary] fw: [Tipografia] [Gentium] Update #5 -
Gentium Basic and Gentium Book Basic available for testing
To: "Gustavo Ferreira" <grilo at centroin.com.br>
Cc: Openfontlibrary at lists.freedesktop.org
Message-ID:
<2285a9d20711150836y4e61bde0mb5205014661b23a at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
On 15/11/2007, Gustavo Ferreira <grilo at centroin.com.br> wrote:
>
> ps: i wonder why this has not been annouced here?
Well, you just announced it :-)
This is good news - I didn't think this would be out until next year
:-)
--
Regards,
Dave
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 23:59:29 +0600
From: Christopher Fynn <cfynn at gmx.net>
Subject: Re: [Openfontlibrary] droid fonts
To: Openfontlibrary at lists.freedesktop.org
Message-ID: <473C8901.90006 at gmx.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Dave Crossland wrote:
> On 15/11/2007, Christopher Fynn <cfynn at gmx.net> wrote:
>> In this case I'd wait till you read the actual licence in the fonts.
>
> Yes; lots of chatter about how much freedom Google is giving with
> these phones, since what is available now is totally proprietary. But
> I hope they will release it under Apache 2. (GPLv3 compatible :-)
>
>> Ascender is not particularly in the Free and OpenSource fonts
camp...
>> They are also the marketing agents for Microsoft(R) fonts.
>
> Yes, this is true, but they did Red Hat's Liberation fonts too, so
> they are more in the sofware-freedom camp then any other proprietary
> foundry, afaik
Hi Dave
I suspect Red Hat paid Bill Davis / Ascender for the Liberation fonts -
and
Google has probably paid them for the Droid fonts too. If Google
commissioned
the Droid fonts then the choice of license will of course be theirs
and, if the
licence for those fonts is open, the credit for that should probably go
to them
not to Ascender.
Ascender's "web fonts survey" used an incredibly biased set of "tests"
<< 1. "TrueType hinting tables ? 8.9% failed (404 TrueType fonts had
improper/incomplete tables*)"
"This test checks for the presence of ?fpgm?, ?prep?, and ?cvt? tables.
If all
three tables are present the font passes, if any or all are missing the
font
fails this test. The consequence of a failure is that the font will be
flagged
as having errors in FontBook under Mac OS X 10.4.">>
- I suspect most of the font tested were created long before FontBook
on Mac OS
X 10.4 came out. To pass this even unhinted fonts need these tables
even if they
contain no useful data. Anyway I understand this has been fixed in Mac
OSX 10.5
- The statement "Fonts that have hinting information will have better
screen
quality in Windows than a font with no hinting information." is imho
not always
true - With TrueType fonts bad hinting instructions or poor quality
"auto
hinting" may be worse than no hinting at all. I've noticed the
on-the-fly auto
hinting in FreeType often renders even many commercial fonts better
than when
the hinting instructions in the font are applied.
<<"Code Page 1252 character set ? 80.8% failed (3696 fonts missing one
or more
characters)">>
<<"Mac Roman character set ? 95.9% failed (4385 fonts missing one or
more
characters)>>
- Without looking at the details of which particular characters are
missing
these figures are not very significant.
- If the missing characters are not used or very rarely used on web
pages how
significant is their absence?. I'm thinking about things like mu (B5)
cedilla
(B8) in the "Windows ANSI" 1253 code page, "approxequal" (C5) and Delta
(C6) in
"Mac Roman".
- For English language only web sites in most cases you could drop many
other
non ASCII characters in these code pages. (This is just what
sub-setting in
embedded fonts does.)
- All Adobe's fonts which used the "Adobe character set" would also
fail this test.
- Thinking beyond these two code pages there are of course examples of
high
quality free fonts like Gentium which has far better character coverage
than
almost any commercial font.
Also how many of the tested free fonts were symbol fonts or similar?
<<"Trademark string ? 1.7% failed (78 fonts missing a trademark
string">>
- If the font name or foundry name is not a registered trademark why
should the
Trademark string field contain any data?
<< "Embedding restriction ? 30.3% failed (1386 fonts set to
?Restricted? or
improper fsType)">>
- My guess an equally large percentage of commercial fonts would be
set to
"Restricted" or have some limitations on embedding
Anyway the Ascender survey at least makes the point that we should
strive for
*quality* in free and open source fonts.
Perhaps the OpenFont library could perform a very useful service to
users by
setting some kind of real standard indicating the quality of fonts and
pointing
out technical faults. Maybe some kind of "seal of approval" for truly
high
quality free fonts conducted by design professionals? Objective
comparisons
between particular free fonts and similar fonts from commercial foundry
might
also be useful. This would perhaps give free fonts more credibility and
be an
answer to the kind of "survey" Ascender made. The current "ratings" and
"reviews" in the OpenFont library are nice but imo pretty subjective.
- Chris
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:35:14 -0800
From: Jon Phillips <jon at rejon.org>
Subject: Re: [Openfontlibrary] droid fonts
To: Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com>
Cc: Openfontlibrary at lists.freedesktop.org
Message-ID: <1195155314.5810.94.camel at localhost>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
On Thu, 2007-11-15 at 16:31 +0000, Dave Crossland wrote:
> On 15/11/2007, Gustavo Ferreira <grilo at centroin.com.br> wrote:
> >
> > it seems like the plattform is going to be free software ? but not
> > the fonts?
>
> The 5 page PDF type specimen PDF -
> http://www.ascendercorp.com/pdf/Droid_fonts.pdf - from the Ascender
> website has the following introductory text:
>
> "The Droid Typeface Family was designed in the Fall of 2006 by
> Ascender's Steve Matteson. The goal was to provide optimal quality
and
> comfort on a mobile handset when rendered in application menus, web
> browsers and for other screen text. Ascender Corporation worked
> closely with the Open Handset Alliance to develop these system fonts
> for the Android platform ? a complete mobile phone software stack
that
> will be made available under the Apache open source license."
>
> I read 'system fonts for the Android platform ... that will be made
> available under the Apache open source license' :-)
Dave, why don't you go ahead and directly contact them and find out the
license they want to apply to these...I think ask first and then
persuade to do OFL later :)
Jon
--
Jon Phillips
San Francisco, CA
USA PH 510.499.0894
jon at rejon.org
http://www.rejon.org
MSN, AIM, Yahoo Chat: kidproto
Jabber Chat: rejon at gristle.org
IRC: rejon at irc.freenode.net
Please note: the contents of this email are not intended to be
legal advice nor should they be relied upon as or represented to be
legal advice. Jon Phillips does not represent any organization through
this email address.
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 19:44:10 +0000
From: Simos Xenitellis <simos.lists at googlemail.com>
Subject: Re: [Openfontlibrary] droid fonts
To: Jon Phillips <jon at rejon.org>
Cc: Openfontlibrary at lists.freedesktop.org
Message-ID: <1195155850.9503.5.camel at user-computer>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
???? 15-11-2007, ????? ???, ??? ??? 11:35 -0800, ?/? Jon Phillips
??????:
> On Thu, 2007-11-15 at 16:31 +0000, Dave Crossland wrote:
> > On 15/11/2007, Gustavo Ferreira <grilo at centroin.com.br> wrote:
> > >
> > > it seems like the plattform is going to be free software ? but
not
> > > the fonts?
> >
> > The 5 page PDF type specimen PDF -
> > http://www.ascendercorp.com/pdf/Droid_fonts.pdf - from the Ascender
> > website has the following introductory text:
> >
> > "The Droid Typeface Family was designed in the Fall of 2006 by
> > Ascender's Steve Matteson. The goal was to provide optimal quality
and
> > comfort on a mobile handset when rendered in application menus, web
> > browsers and for other screen text. Ascender Corporation worked
> > closely with the Open Handset Alliance to develop these system
fonts
> > for the Android platform ? a complete mobile phone software stack
that
> > will be made available under the Apache open source license."
> >
> > I read 'system fonts for the Android platform ... that will be made
> > available under the Apache open source license' :-)
>
> Dave, why don't you go ahead and directly contact them and find out
the
> license they want to apply to these...I think ask first and then
> persuade to do OFL later :)
Apparently the fonts can be extracted from the binary image found in
the
SDK,
http://damieng.com/blog/2007/11/14/droid-font-family-courtesy-of-google-ascender
Simos
------------------------------
Message: 7
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 01:19:09 +0000
From: "Dave Crossland" <dave at lab6.com>
Subject: Re: [Openfontlibrary] droid fonts
To: "Christopher Fynn" <cfynn at gmx.net>
Cc: Openfontlibrary at lists.freedesktop.org
Message-ID:
<2285a9d20711151719p3ebd4766g853ef341375b6a63 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
On 15/11/2007, Christopher Fynn <cfynn at gmx.net> wrote:
> Dave Crossland wrote:
> > On 15/11/2007, Christopher Fynn <cfynn at gmx.net> wrote:
> >> In this case I'd wait till you read the actual licence in the
fonts.
> >
> > Yes; lots of chatter about how much freedom Google is giving with
> > these phones, since what is available now is totally proprietary.
But
> > I hope they will release it under Apache 2. (GPLv3 compatible :-)
> >
> >> Ascender is not particularly in the Free and OpenSource fonts
camp...
> >> They are also the marketing agents for Microsoft(R) fonts.
> >
> > Yes, this is true, but they did Red Hat's Liberation fonts too, so
> > they are more in the sofware-freedom camp then any other
proprietary
> > foundry, afaik
>
> I suspect Red Hat paid Bill Davis / Ascender for the Liberation fonts
- and
> Google has probably paid them for the Droid fonts too. If Google
commissioned
> the Droid fonts then the choice of license will of course be theirs
and, if the
> licence for those fonts is open, the credit for that should probably
go to them
> not to Ascender.
Yes, that's a fair point.
> Ascender's "web fonts survey" used an incredibly biased set of
"tests"
This is a great piece of commentary - please add it as a new page on
the Open Font LiBrary wiki :-)
> Anyway the Ascender survey at least makes the point that we should
strive for
> *quality* in free and open source fonts.
Yes, I totally agree
> Perhaps the OpenFont library could
Please add this to the Roadmap page of the OFLB wiki :-)
Btw, are you a developer? :-)
--
Regards,
Dave
------------------------------
Message: 8
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 01:19:47 +0000
From: "Dave Crossland" <dave at lab6.com>
Subject: Re: [Openfontlibrary] droid fonts
To: "Jon Phillips" <jon at rejon.org>
Cc: Openfontlibrary at lists.freedesktop.org
Message-ID:
<2285a9d20711151719n25e2f58g4fb4374d770c3bf0 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
On 15/11/2007, Jon Phillips <jon at rejon.org> wrote:
> >
> > I read 'system fonts for the Android platform ... that will be made
> > available under the Apache open source license' :-)
>
> Dave, why don't you go ahead and directly contact them and find out
the
> license they want to apply to these...I think ask first and then
> persuade to do OFL later :)
Good idea, I sent them this using the contact form:
"Hi,
Please confirm the free software license that the recently announced
Droid fonts will be released under, when the Android software is
released as free software under the Apache 2.0 license.
Many thanks,
Dave"
--
Regards,
Dave
------------------------------
Message: 9
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 13:30:28 +0600
From: Christopher Fynn <cfynn at gmx.net>
Subject: Re: [Openfontlibrary] droid fonts
To: Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com>,
Openfontlibrary at lists.freedesktop.org
Message-ID: <473D4714.9020802 at gmx.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Dave Crossland wrote:
> Btw, are you a developer? :-)
>
Yes (amongst other things). In that regard I'm primarily involved in
writing
software and making fonts for Tibetan and Dzongkha.
Fonts I'm working on include Tibetan Machine Uni see:
<http://www.thdl.org/tools/toolbox/index.php#wiki=/wiki/site/26a34146-33a6-48ce-001e-f16ce7908a6a/tibetan%20machine%20uni.html>
and Jomolhari see:
<https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/free-tibetan/>
As significant updates of both these fonts will soon be ready I'll wait
till
then to upload them to the Open Font Library.
(Unfortunately I don't have the time to attempt creating proper hinting
instructions for either of these fonts - if anyone with experience in
this would
like to take this on please get in touch)
- Chris
Thimphu, Bhutan
------------------------------
Message: 10
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 07:53:58 +0000
From: "Dave Crossland" <dave at lab6.com>
Subject: Re: [Openfontlibrary] droid fonts
To: "Christopher Fynn" <cfynn at gmx.net>
Cc: Openfontlibrary at lists.freedesktop.org
Message-ID:
<2285a9d20711152353o3994ecf7n2e44370938f7a3c8 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
On 16/11/2007, Christopher Fynn <cfynn at gmx.net> wrote:
> Dave Crossland wrote:
>
> > Btw, are you a developer? :-)
>
> Yes (amongst other things)
That's great news, because we need more developers in this community
:-)
> In that regard I'm primarily involved in writing
> software and making fonts for Tibetan and Dzongkha.
Wow, that's awesome! :-)
> As significant updates of both these fonts will soon be ready I'll
wait till
> then to upload them to the Open Font Library.
Amazing :-)
What kind of free software license are you considering?
--
Regards,
Dave
------------------------------
_______________________________________________
Openfontlibrary mailing list
Openfontlibrary at lists.freedesktop.org
http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/openfontlibrary
End of Openfontlibrary Digest, Vol 23, Issue 6
**********************************************
____________________________________________________________________________________
Be a better pen pal.
Text or chat with friends inside Yahoo! Mail. See how. http://overview.mail.yahoo.com/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/openfontlibrary/attachments/20071116/91ed70ca/attachment-0001.html
More information about the Openfontlibrary
mailing list