[Openfontlibrary] On the license of Adobe Utopia font

[George Williams]

On Wed, 2008-05-21 at 22:41, Christopher Fynn wrote:
> >   1) guidelines
> > 	(to establish xheight, capheight, etc.)
> 
> Shouldn't the AFM file contain the values for Ascender, Descender, XHeight &
> CapHeight?
I was giving examples. Yes, afm should contain those. There could be
guidelines for other things. In Fontographer guidelines were arbetrary
splines and did not need to specify simple things like heights but could
provide the shape of an "o" or whatever else might be important.

I have no idea if this were used, but the functionality was present.
> 
> In the case of Latin fonts  these values are usually pretty easy to
> derive anyway.
Yup. As I said they were examples. More complex things COULD be present.
> 
> Stems and alignment zones are also in the font files
These correspond directly to PostScript Hints and BlueValues. They can
be retrieved from the pfb without loss.
> 
> >   2) background images (and splines)
> > 	(used for tracing outlines)
> 
> *If* they traced the outlines in Fontographer.
I am describing what COULD be present in the fog file which would not be
in the pfb/afm. I have no idea what IS present.
> 
> >   3) diagonal hints (useless for PostScript fonts)
> 
> Since Adobe were making only PostScript fonts - I doubt if there would be
> diagonal hints.
I am describing what IS present in the fog file. You get diagonal hints
whether you want them or not. There is no point to them for postscript
but they would still be present.
> 
> > The fog file can also contain bitmaps, but I presume that if those
> > existed there would be bdf files for them.
> 
> There is a good chance Adobe developed Utopia using something other than
> Fontographer anyway.

> 
> The  point was that in the case of Type 1 fonts there may be little or
> no useful extra information contained in the Fontographer "source" file.
> Anyway the font files themselves are probably readable by many more
> applications that the Fontographer files.
Correct. The fog format is undocumented and FontLab says it is too
complex to explain. Nothing but fontographer can read it.
> 
> Something like the designers original sketches for the font might be
> far more useful to anyone wanting to extend a font like Utopia ...
True.