[OpenFontLibrary] Recent non-font content on OFLB

[Barry Schwartz]

Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny at eglug.org> skribis:
> On Fri, Mar 05, 2010 at 10:29:00AM +0100, Nicolas Spalinger wrote:
> > Dave? Ben? Jon? What about the new site?
> 
> I'm holding my breath for a functional GNU hurd on which I'll run LaTeX3
> using final STIX fonts downloaded from the new OFLB website.

If I may interject as a font developer and font user.

There's a serious issue buried in there, which is that free fonts do
not have font-functional free software on which to run, and it keeps
on being like that. I am developing for TeXies (whose software is
_mostly_ functional) and for the users of what some call slaveware. I
have to write my own software to test and use my own Latin-script
fonts.

OFLB really ought to be able to provide software bundles, I think,
with font collections bundled with software that actually works, in
which one can actually access the fonts in an Adobe Opticals
collection and actually get the fonts asked for, in which OpenType
tags can be selected, and so on. Starter kits. That's how ordinary
people get drawn into the font world. That's part of how to make OFLB
and the bundled-software projects very, very popular. But the fonts
actually have to work in the software.