Bitstream To Donate 10 Fonts To Free Software World 410
21mhz writes "Posted on FootNotes: The GNOME Foundation and Bitstream Inc. announce long-term agreement to bring high quality fonts to Free Software. Ten fonts will be released for use under a special open license agreement, giving advanced font capabilities to all free and open source software developers and users. Read the full press release for more details." Modification and re-release (under a different name) is explicitly allowed, too.
thank god! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:thank god! (Score:2, Informative)
fonts types vs anti-aliasing (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What I don't understand. (Score:2, Informative)
Show us your Bits!(tream fonts) (Score:5, Informative)
http://tieguy.org/fonts.png
Pretty decent stuff, in my opinion.
It's not _that_ great. . . (Score:1, Informative)
Psst -- LCD users... (Score:5, Informative)
If you're running XFree86 4 and Xft as your font manager, add this to your XftConfig:
match edit rgba = rgb; (some esoteric LCDs may need "bgr" instead.)
Sub-pixel font rendering! Yes, it has a little visible color artifacting, but it gives you the same wonderful effect that you get with Windows XP ClearType and Mac Jaguar sub-pixel rendering.
On my Viewsonic vp201mb, I can see fonts beautifully a couple point sizes smaller than I can see them with antialiasing alone.
Re:fonts types vs anti-aliasing (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Psst -- LCD users... (Score:5, Informative)
Enabling sub-pixel rendering on Trinitron-esque monitors also seems to work out well as they use a regular rectangular pixel layout, similar to LCD panels. I didn't expect it to work because CRTs don't have the same 1:1 relationship that LCDs have when running at their native resolution, but...
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Re:What's the point? (Score:1, Informative)
Another point is that, depending on what the fonts are, they may make it possible to work in Linux, and have people on other platforms see your work the way that you intended them to see it.
Neither of these reasons may be personally important to you if you're not a designer. But consider the fact that, if these fonts allow designers to work in Linux, then they represent a small step forward in the Linux desktop.
Other free (as in freedom and as in beer) fonts (Score:2, Informative)
I have released a set of fonts under the GPL (10 or so) my latest "Dustismo" is a good all purpose sans serif, with more then 350 glyphs. get them all at http://www.cheapskatefonts.com/
Thanks,
Dustin
Re:10 fonts /IS/ a big deal. (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed, and according to Fontilus Bitstream were the people who made these fonts.
I think people don't realise how hard it is to make good fonts. Arial is a huge project in and of itself, simply getting the fonts looking good at all sizes is hard, and then you need glyphs for other languages and alphabets.
It's hard. 10 fonts is an amazing gift, if they are of high quality. I think they will be, Bitstream are good.
Re:10 fonts /IS/ a big deal. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:thank god! (Score:2, Informative)
But as everything nowadays, the developers are having patent issues. The deal is that in order to have nice looking fonts (at least with the current fonts that are available) you have to use the BCI (Byte Code Interpreter), wich is patented, so many distros do not distribute freetype compiled with the BCI turned on (some distros don't care about it and turn the BCI on anyway, I assume this is what happens with redhat). And even when BCI is turned on, some distros really do a lousy job when configuring the fonts.
I have mozilla running with fonts exactly like they look in windows (i did compare the fonts using vmware and they really are exactly the same) but I did have to configure many things. If you are willing to do this too check the Gentoo Forums [gentoo.org]. Unlike what happens on other Linux distros comunities, the gentoo users don't give up until they've got it like they want (and don't mind sharing their work), so you'll probably won't have a hard time getting help in the gentoo community.
STIX Fonts (Score:5, Informative)
The STIX [stixfonts.org] fonts are going to cover all of Unicode.
Maybe I'll never again see "?" for every non-ASCII character. Now, *that* will be useful.
From their site:
The STIX mission will be fully realized when:
* Fully hinted PostScript Type 1 and OpenType font sets have been created.
* All characters/glyphs have been incorporated into Unicode representation or comparable representation and browsers include program logic to fully utilize the STIX font set in the electronic representation of scholarly scientific documents.
Re:thank god! (Score:3, Informative)
Vera Font Family (Score:3, Informative)
The 10 fonts are all from the same family "Vera". Hopefully they look good enough on the screen and on paper that people won't mind using them.
There are at three major styles "Serif", "Sans" and "Mono", with three minor styles "regular", "italic" and "bold". Thats 9 fonts. I would guess the 10th is a set of symbols.
I haven't been able to find samples of the family on either bitstreams site or myFonts.com so I would also guess that the font is renamed for copyright purposes from something else.
Re:Psst -- LCD users... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:thank god! (Score:3, Informative)
Try installing the XFT version of Mozilla [mozilla.org]
It's very easy to install, and looks amazing! It pains me to use any other browser on any platform. And I used to *hate* Mozilla's fonts.
Re:Why aren't there more good Free fonts already? (Score:5, Informative)
But Your Mileage May Vary, and it's been awhile since I've actually made a font (1993 was the last time I went throught the complete process).
If you want a complete Unicode font, well, then all bets are off, since those can be huge.
Some information/clarification about the agreement (Score:5, Informative)
1) We hope a preliminary version of the fonts will be available next week for download, but no redistribution. They still need some work; consider this a beta test.
2) We hope finished fonts will be available in a month or so, after Jim Lyles (the font designer) has finished them up. We need a few changes: the font family Vera is derived from (Prima) has "0" and "O" too hard to distinguish, and similarly for "1" and "l", given our often technical audience.
There is also some work on hinting, etc, to finish up.
When finished, they will go under a copyright which allows you (roughly) to fold, spindle, and mutilate the fonts, so long as you change the name to something else, and you can sell them so long as you don't sell them by themselves. You can sell them with any software whatsoever. You can freely redistribute the fonts anywhere, anytime, unmodified under that name.
The sale provision is that Bitstream does not want other font vendors to just drop the fonts into their font sale mechanisms and sell them, something they are giving away.
I can't say I blame them.
3) the coverage of these fonts is roughly western european; there is the possibility of some fonts in the future with wider coverage, but as that those fonts are not yet complete, I don't want to say much more, as their availability is much less certain.
4) You can get a good idea of what the fonts look like and what the coverage is by the following URL (once the slashdot effect allows Bitstream to recover).
http://store.bitstream.com/searchresults.asp?se
Now you know where the name Vera comes from
5) the agreement also covers potentially adding characters to the family under the Bitstream Vera name, but Bitstream (and Gnome) reserve the right to approve the additions: we want to *know* when we open fonts of these names that we have what we expect. Feel free to hack to your hearts content under other names, however.
Re:thank god! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:fonts types vs anti-aliasing (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps you meant 8 pixels? Either way, that's absolutely the domain where hinting is most useful.
Simon
Re:Give a man a fish... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:STIX Fonts (Score:2, Informative)
The STIX Fonts Project is an effort by a group of publishers of scientific, technical, and medical journals to create a comprehensive set of fonts that contain essentially every character that might be needed in a technical article published in any scientific discipline.
STIX definitely won't cover all of Unicode, but they should have all the characters and ligatures for good typography in languages written with Cyrillic, Greek and Latin variants. Of course they will also have all the mathematical symbols. Unfortunately Unicode decided that mathematics was its own script worthy of encoding thus blowing away their principles of character identification. For example, the Fractur script which was previously treated only as a variant of the Latin alphabet is now also encoded in its own block, but for mathematical use only. Nevermind the invisible function application character . . . Unicode text is still inadequate and needlessly complex to encode abstract mathematics. Hopefully someone will take the STIX fonts and create some beautiful mechanism for typsetting mathematics from a non-textual abstract representation suitable for symbolic manipulation.
Re:Ugh, horrible (Score:3, Informative)
Linux apps will keep sucking as long as each and every app does font rendering its own goddamned way. The app should tell the server what fucking text to render and where, and the server should anti-alias it and render it, and we should toss out the old apps that use the antiquated X rendering system to draw glyphs in the X client. Then just focus on making Xft/FreeType rock.
Re:10 fonts /IS/ a big deal. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:What about Adobe PDF Base fonts? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:thank god! (Score:3, Informative)
The current Slackware has them too. So does Mozilla, but you have to compile it with --enable-xft (IIRC), but check out fixes here [packetwarriors.net].
Re:10 fonts /IS/ a big deal. (Score:3, Informative)
You are - Monotype also made times new roman, and courier - at least on my XP and 2000 machine they did.
Re:this is cool...Quark on Linux (Score:2, Informative)
Scribus is a completely free (as in freedom) publishing program that works very much like Quark.
Check it out here:
http://web2.altmuehlnet.de/fschmid/about.html [altmuehlnet.de]
Re:10 fonts /IS/ a big deal. (Score:2, Informative)
Tahoma was designed by Matthew Carter, formerly of BitStream. He was commissioned by Microsoft to create a set of screen-friendly fonts, Verdana and Georgia being his output.
Verdana is based of the Tahoma outlines (and looks almost identical, has been widened slightly, and hinted differently. It's true to say that it is specifically designed to look good on-screen; it's a complete fallacy to say it's a pixel font.
Be careful how you say things (Score:4, Informative)
It seems to be little-known fact that fonts and typefaces are not protected by copyright.
That's because this is not quite correct. You should read the site you link to more closely.
There are two separate areas of copyright on a computer font, relating to the design (the shape of the letters), and the vector data - and name - that describes this design.
In the US, the design of a typeface cannot be copyrighted, but the data and name that describes this design can be. Thus, for instance, Monotype can claim copyright over their implementation of Arial, so if you simply copy the .ttf font file without their permission, you are in breach of copyright law. However, if you print out each character of the font extra-large and then scan and trace the shapes to make a new font with a different name, you are okay - in the process of tracing the shape, you have created an original work. This is why there are so many cheap knock-offs of popular typefaces with subtly different names to the original. Funnily enough given the nature of this story, Bitstream are notorious for doing this.
I don't think your idea of creating bitmaps from a scalable font to avoid copyright would pass muster, because you have merely translated the copyrighted data from one form to another - no different to converting the font from TrueType to Type1, for instance. You haven't created an original work.
Note that this rather strange situation only applies to the US - just about everywhere else that enforces copyright allows designers to copyright typeface designs as well as the data that describes the design, so if you make a knock-off of a non-US designer's typeface, you might find yourself in hot water.
Interestingly, the situation dates from the early years of American independence when all the commonly-used typeface designs were owned by foreigners and there was a shortage of skilled typographers to create distinctive American typefaces. To get around this problem, the fledgling US Patent Office simply declared typeface designs uncopyrightable, thus sparing US printers some stiff royalties. Ahhh the irony...
It interesting that the lack of copyright protection has apparently not hindered the creation of a wide variety of fonts.
True, but it should be noted that almost all the important typefaces of the last 200 years have been designed outside of the US... Times, Helvetica, Gill Sans, Futura, Eurostile, Rotis, Palatino, these typefaces are the backbone of modern design, and none of them came from the US.
copyright (Score:3, Informative)
No they can't, not in the US anyway.
typeright.org [typeright.org]: "The US Copyright Office still officially refuses to accord protection for typeface designs."
There are licensing and trademark issues, but not copyright. As the poster said, the lawyer works on intimidation, not actually getting judgements. (Unless the DMCA has radically changed this, which is possible as it seems to have all kinds of unintended consequences.)
Re:Show us your Bits!(tream fonts) (Score:3, Informative)