[OpenFontLibrary] Windows 5k Name table restriction

[Chris Lilley]

On Thursday, March 18, 2010, 6:36:29 PM, Dave wrote:

DC> Hi,
DC>  Interesting: this effects us, I think. A url of a license is not
DC> as ideal as the full license text, but I guess will have to do.

I reported that back in August (thread title was "Verbose license text in a font"). 

You responded that validators should be aware of that, maybe issue a warning.

Nicholas responded to argue against vagueness in font licensing (which seemed to me unrelated to a choice between embedding and linking to the exact same license) and to argue against a "windows limitation" having any impact on Libre Fonts.

Since I had merely asked for information, had suggested no change, and since I was unaware that preventing Windows users from using Libre fonts was a goal, I let the matter drop.


DC>  Regards, Dave
DC>  ---------- Forwarded message ----------
DC> From: "प्रविण सातपुते" <pravin.d.s at gmail.com>
DC> Date: 18 Mar 2010, 9:28 AM
DC> Subject: warning while generating .ttf file
DC>  To: "fedora-fonts-list" <fedora-fonts-list at redhat.com>

DC> "Windows has decided that fonts with 'name' tables bigger than 5K are
DC> insecure and will refuse to load them. Don't ask me why they believe this.
DC>  This font has a name table which is 6948 bytes and is bigger than this limit."
DC>  
DC> http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/fontinfo.html#Names

DC> .... MicroSoft recently (2009) released a security patch in which
DC> they decided       that font's whose 'name' table was bigger than
DC> 5K were insecure. Personally       I cannot fathom their logic,
DC> but that's OK, I usually can't. Unfortunately       many licenses
DC> are bigger than 5K, the OFL is for one, so it is now      
DC> "better" to include a link to a license website rather than the
DC> full text       of the license -- at least it is if you want your font to work on Windows.
DC> .....


DC> Most of the fonts has license included inside fonts itself.

DC> version fontforge-20090923-2

DC> -
DC> Pravin S
DC>   
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DC>  fonts at lists.fedoraproject.org
DC>  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fonts
DC>  http://fonts.fedoraproject.org/

DC>   



-- 
 Chris Lilley                    mailto:chris at w3.org
 Technical Director, Interaction Domain
 W3C Graphics Activity Lead
 Co-Chair, W3C Hypertext CG