[Openfontlibrary] FOSS and the Commercial Print World

[Jon Phillips]

On Sat, 2007-02-03 at 09:26 -0800, Ed Trager wrote:
> Hi, Jon,
> 
> >
> > I would recommend if this interests anyone, that we should try to
> > consolidate resources with other projects. Ideally though we need to get
> > thumbnailing code to work and have more services sorted so that we could
> > absorb pre-existing projects :)
> >
> > Oh, one thought we could do is allow for people to create their own font
> > thumbnails when they submit their font. ccHost allows this at present.
> > Obviously this is not ideal, but is doable right now.
> >
> > Would anyone like to help wit this immediate step? I think 128 px x 128
> > px would be ideal for a quick thumbnail. Then, you can upload to your
> > previous uploads and any bitmap will show up as a thumbnail...cool?
> >
> 
> What do you mean by 128px X 128px square thumbnails?  How does that
> make sense for a font preview?  Surely a rectangle that is wider than
> it is tall is the most natural shape for a Western font preview
> thumbnail, no?

Sure, I agree. I was just making a quick idea for how we can get
thumbnails up asap, as cchost accepts bitmaps as thumbnails currently.
While not ideal, its a first step....

> I just took a look at the openfontlibrary.org site and, to be honest,
> this site is really is not there yet ...

Yes, you are right. Could you help us make it better?

> Just one clear example : when I click on one of the fonts such as
> "Hopfer Hornbook" , the page displays the font preview as a 120px X
> 120px square -- even though the actual bitmap is really 364px X 180px!
>  The actual 364x180 size makes a lot more sense.  The
> non-isometrically scrunched-up previews on the current site look so
> completely amateurish, it is ridiculous.  This is supposed to be a
> premier site for Open Fonts?

Well, the site hasn't launched officially and it is up to us to make it
better, right? I repaired what you commented on. You can always file a
bug as well and/or even better, fix it and submit a patch.

> My recommendation would be to FIRST create some really good and
> attractive infrastructure so that OFLB looks like an attractive
> repository where typographers might actually want to put their fonts.
> This is not the case at all currently.

Ok, please help us. These are great suggestions, but we need developers
to help us make it better.

> Besides decent font previews, OFLB needs to take a hint from the best
> commercial font sites.  For example --and this is just a completely
> random example that I clicked on to illustrate my point-- please take
> a look at http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/kennethwoodruff/sonopa/ :
> 
> (1) Notice first that there is the name of the font and also a "Design
> Credits" section.  For a premier Open Font site, I would actually
> recommend that the "Design Credits" appear right at the top, next to
> or below the font name itself.  People like to be recognized for their
> artistic work.  On the current OFLB site for Hopfer Hornbook, for
> example, it says it is "by: liftarn" and "featuring: Daniel Hopfer" --
> Does this mean liftarn is the author of the font, or just the guy who
> uploaded it to the site?  I'm confused.  It appears to have been based
> on letter forms by the historical Daniel Hopfer.  So why not just say
> something like that to make it very clear, i.e.:
> 
>    Design Credits :  This font by <John Doe> is based on letterforms
> by Daniel Hopfer ((circa 1470-1536).
> 
> ... that would be better and much more professional.

Great, can you file this as a bug/feature request and or take this on?
That would help out.

> (2) Getting back to the Sonopa font example on Myfonts.com, the second
> item under the name of the font is something that I really like in
> principle :  a series of little icons that let me know instantly that
> this font has the basic Latin letter set [Az], a set of extended Latin
> too [àä], a matching Euro sign (and probably this means other currency
> symbols too?) [€], an icon indicating the presence of common
> typographical ligatures [ff], and so on.  This concise information is
> very useful.  The OFLB site should absolutely have some way of
> indicating glyph and Unicode block coverage in a font -- either with
> icons or in some other way.

Great idea! Please file or fix :)

> (3) The preview image --which all of you who have ever looked at
> Myfonts.com before will notice is interactively tied to a little "Type
> your text here" input box .  Whenever you type in your own text, all
> of the little previews automagically change to display your text.
> This is of course driven by an AJAX XmlHttpRequest engine.  For a site
> like OFLB, we can easily imagine setting up exactly this kind of thing
> using AJAX on the front end and, for the time being, PHP and libGD on
> the back end.  Astute readers of this list may remember that I have
> previously pointed out a serious limitation of the current libGD
> library -- because it uses only FreeType2 and not Pango, layout of
> ComplexTextLayout (CTL) scripts is not possible.  Probably a number of
> OpenType features, like "ff" ligature substitution are also not
> possible.  Nevertheless, a basic PHP+libGD backend on the server would
> still be an excellent place to start and would serve Western font
> needs fairly well.  Also, it is my understanding that the new libGD
> maintainers are looking into adding Pango support to GD.  So choosing
> libGD may provide a good upgrade path toward CTL script and eventually
> advanced OpenType presentation (as the HarfBuzz library in Pango
> matures) in the future too.
> 
> (4) After that cool interactive font preview on MyFonts.com, notice
> there is also a "Gallery Images" : click on this and you get to see an
> extended PDF "proof sheet".  Now this is professional typography!  It
> is worth noting that some of the best FLOSS font projects already
> provide PDF proof sheets : the Libertine Open Font project
> (http://linuxlibertine.sourceforge.net/) and Gentium
> (http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=Gentium_samples)
> are premier examples that set the standard.  When people contact me to
> have their fonts included on unifont.org, I now routinely recommend
> that they need to have extended font previews --either as images or as
> PDFs -- on their font sites.
> 
> So, in my mind, what OFLB should do is provide a set of guidelines for
> people who want to upload their fonts to this repository: "You must
> provide a) Font name and complete authorship and design credits
> information in such-and-such a format, b) Clear license information in
> such-and-such a format c) A font preview of such-and-such a size, d)
> Font glyph and Unicode block coverage information in such-and-such a
> format, d) At least one proof sheet in such-and-such PDF format ... "
> 
> If OFLB *first* provides good supporting infrastructure and a serious
> set of guidelines which clearly show the professional nature of the
> site, then I think the professional and aspiring amateur typographers
> alike may find OFLB interesting. Over time, people will then naturally
> want to put their fonts up on OFLB.  Until you do that, however, I
> think you really have nothing.

Great and thanks Ed. Please though step-up to the plate and help us out.
While these comments are great, these comments are at an effective stand
still unless constructive criticism is turned into practical efforts.

I encourage you to please help us out. Send me your ssh2 and gpg keys
and I'll file to get accounts for people who want to make this project
great.

This project is not going to become golden and mature over night, but is
about incremental improvements from community members.

Jon

> 
> Just my opinion -- Ed Trager
-- 
Jon Phillips

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