[Openfontlibrary] FontEmbedding.com

[Christopher Fynn]

Dave Crossland wrote:

> 2008/7/23 Christopher Fynn <cfynn at gmx.net>:
>> These are the same people that released the report trashing free fonts

> They were shit-talking proprietary software redistributable at zero
> price - "freeware" - and all the problems they identify would be
> solvable if those fonts were not proprietary

Agreed.

>>> They say that EOT will be a W3C specification.
>> Microsoft's Embedded OpenType (.EOT) Font Format Submission Request to W3C:
>> <http://www.w3.org/Submission/2008/01/>
> 
> Microsoft can submit whatever they want to the W3C, that doesn't mean
> it WILL become a specification.

Adobe are supporting this as well - and from what I've heard it has
fairly widespread support.

> Bitstream hold plenty of software patents on all this stuff, and they
> aren't involved in the W3C, so anyone who wants to implement anything
> like EOT is going to be screwed by them.

The main Bitstream Patents related to this seems to be 5,577,177 
"Apparatus and methods for creating and using portable fonts" which goes 
back to 1995 - I'm wondering how restrictive or enforceable this is? So 
far they don't seem to have taken any successful action to stop EOT & 
Microsoft's WEFT which has already been around for ten years. Why woud 
that change now? Meanwhile Bitstream seem have stopped pushing their PFR 
for web font embedding  (which anyway did not work complex scripts) - 
and seem to be concentrating on it's use in Digital Video and embedded 
devices.

Bitstream's  Own TrueDoc / PFR blurb
http://www.bitstream.com/font_rendering/products/truedoc/faqs.html
claims "TrueDoc works differently from font embedding" which sounds
like they are trying to claim what they do is *different* from EOT etc.

They also claim: "When recording characters, the TrueDoc recorder does 
not access the original font directly. In addition, TrueDoc does not 
copy or use any hinting information from the original font. TrueDoc's 
internal, automatic hinting process handles all hinting to guarantee 
exceptional quality on all devices." - and seem to imply that this gets 
round the original font license.

Of course Microsoft, Monotype, & Adobe also have number of patents of 
their own related to font embedding .

- chris