Free STIX Fonts to be Released in September 27
tbspit writes "The STIX fonts project has announced that version 1.0 of the STIX fonts should be released in September 2005. The comprehensive font set is to include mathematical symbols and alphabets, and is intended to serve the scientific and engineering community for electronic and print publication. The STIX fonts should be available as fully hinted Type 1 and True Type fonts. The STIX project will also create a TeX implementation. Progress towards release can be monitored here."
What do they look like? (Score:5, Insightful)
The website talks about how they've been working on the fonts for ten years, but what if they are all butt-ugly? I looked at the website, and there doesn't seem to be even a hint of what they look like. What gives?
Re:What do they look like? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What do they look like? (Score:1)
Re:What do they look like? (Score:5, Informative)
License? (Score:5, Insightful)
This license is still in development. It should be completed by June 2005.
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User License
This license is still in development. It should be completed by June 2005.
Yeah, great, but the devil is always in the details on this sort of thing. If the goal is that "STIX fonts will be made available, under royalty-free license, to anyone, including publishers, software developers, scientists, students, and the general public," let's just put them in the public domain and skip licensing altogether.
But does it support unicode ?. (Score:4, Interesting)
Why the hell don't these people build a single one that really, truly works ?. Until then I'll be using ArialUni.ttf and suffering badly. (texmf is not bad, but the world just doesn't have enough Hellingman).
Re:But does it support unicode ?. (Score:5, Informative)
So based on the sound of it, this will work in different languages using unicode.
Re:But does it support unicode ?. (Score:1)
You mean, like Gentium [sil.org]? Or Doulos SIL [sil.org]?
The Unicode Font Guide for Linux [umich.edu] should also give you some pointers.
Ulrik P.
How long does it usually take? (Score:5, Interesting)
The community is in great need of such fonts. This open source online equation editor [sourceforge.net] is just an example. We had to recommend the use of a shareware pan-unicode font (Code2000 [att.net]) because the only alternative is the proprietary Arial Unicode MS [microsoft.com].
Nevertheless, the time it took them to make STIX almost ready looks hilarious to me. Does anybody know how long does it usually take to design such a font?
Re:How long does it usually take? (Score:5, Informative)
Computer Modern was designed over about 12 years.
Of course, Knuth was working on other things (notably Metafont and TeX) in that period as well.
Re:How long does it usually take? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:How long does it usually take? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:How long does it usually take? (Score:3, Interesting)
How long does it take to do an oil painting? Well, it depends on the oil painting. Font design is a serious craft, and this is a big font.
Re:How long does it usually take? (Score:1)
Unlike an oil painting font design should be to some point paralelizable.
MicroPress [micropress-inc.com] has been working on this for the last 5 years and they don't seem like a one-man company to me. After looking at their horribly designed site I am starting to doubt even that. Maybe I'm wrong, but I would have some reticence at hiring them.
Re:How long does it usually take? (Score:2)
Very odd.
Phil
I hope... (Score:4, Funny)
Use MathML fonts (Score:3, Informative)
They are freely downloadable (free as in beer), and they have the backing of being used and tested by the Mozilla foundation.
Re:Use MathML fonts (Score:5, Informative)
MathML-enabled Mozilla uses the MIT fonts, but it first maps them to the right entities. This happens in the code because the fonts, although free, are not to be touched or redistributed. Without the right mapping the fonts are useless, and for anything other than standalone applications you cannot perform such a mapping. So I think that you might be forgetting that the main focus of MathML is the Web not standalone applications. The CSS "font-*" attributes don't allow characters to be mapped to different fonts so I doubt that the MIT fonts are of any real use on the Web (unless you are targeting only the users of MathML-enabled Mozilla).
Bold (Score:2)
My systems' DPI is 133, I have to give gnome a font size of 4-5 at that DPI to get the small size I want. I just lie and tell it my DPI is 66, and set the fonts to 9 and 10. But the fonts still dont "look" bold. I honestly cannot distinguish which of my Liferea feeds have been updated and which havent (bold/not bold).
I tried a whole army of fonts, still
Re:Bold (Score:1, Informative)