With the help of a bit of handy code from Ned, I've converted the Accufonts.sar file on SqueakMap with all of its bundled .sf2 font files into a single changeset which could be added to the update stream. The entire changeset is just over 100K, not too bad, although a little too large to post to this list, so I put it here:
http://www.mindspring.com/~dway/smalltalk/InstallAccuFonts.8.cs.gz
This is the candidate for inclusion in the 3.7alpha update stream. Note that the main point of the changeset is to remove the original Apple fonts (NewYork) from the image, so that the font clause in Squeak-L becomes irrelevant, allowing the possibility of making progress with sublicensing (or even re-licensing) Squeak. The replacement fonts look very similar so there shouldn't be much that's noticably changed. As a bonus, several extra bitmap fonts are thrown in.
This also removes the ComicPlain/Bold bitmap fonts, which are not free font and were removed so that potential business users of Squeak have a "clean" image to work from font-wise. On the other hand, apparently there is some legal precedent recently that bitmap fonts are not copyrightable, so this may or may not really be an issue. Anyway, "Accujen" is a reasonable looking sans-serif replacement for the Comic fonts.
This changeset does not remove the ComicSansMS TrueType font (yet), which probably should be removed, because outline fonts definitely are copyrightable, and this is not a free font either as far as I know. However, I was going to wait and possibly remove this one as part of incorporating the BitStream Vera TrueType fonts, so we have a bunch of replacement TT fonts before getting rid of this one.
The "Atlanta" bitmap font, which someone donated to Squeak awhile back, remains.
The Accufonts come with their own (very simple) license, included in the changeset preamble. This seems fine, fonts are a very different entity from source code, and it is not uncommon for software to provide a separate license for included fonts.
There are still a couple of smallish issues with these fonts, but I wanted to get these in soon so that people can try them out, and we can fix/tweak things based on feedback from that. The problems I know of are: The character widths for some punctuation characters could use some adjusting... e.g. the Accuny period character is quite wide and looks funny IMHO. Also, some fonts such as Accuny09 and Accuny10 have the same size of 12, which can cause problems for some tools, such as Boris Gaertner's useful FontEditor tool.
One odd last thing... I notice that the "Smalltalk garbageCollect" at the end of the postscript does not remove the old fonts from "StrikeFont allInstances", but doing a manual garbageCollect after filing in the changeset does. Maybe the ChangeSet object is somehow holding onto the fonts up 'til then, or something. No biggie I guess, we'll make sure garbage is collected sometime before 3.7 goes final. ;-)
- Doug
I vote a great big YES on this inclusion. the fonts look great and and there are more faces than with the set currently in Squeak. And Microsoft's withdrawn the free distribution of Comic Sans besides.
I have had problems with the BitStream Vera TrueType fonts, the font menu is totally fouled up for those fonts and they don't appear to display correctly.
Doug Way wrote:
With the help of a bit of handy code from Ned, I've converted the Accufonts.sar file on SqueakMap with all of its bundled .sf2 font files into a single changeset which could be added to the update stream. The entire changeset is just over 100K, not too bad, although a little too large to post to this list, so I put it here:
http://www.mindspring.com/~dway/smalltalk/InstallAccuFonts.8.cs.gz
This is the candidate for inclusion in the 3.7alpha update stream. Note that the main point of the changeset is to remove the original Apple fonts (NewYork) from the image, so that the font clause in Squeak-L becomes irrelevant, allowing the possibility of making progress with sublicensing (or even re-licensing) Squeak. The replacement fonts look very similar so there shouldn't be much that's noticably changed. As a bonus, several extra bitmap fonts are thrown in.
This also removes the ComicPlain/Bold bitmap fonts, which are not free font and were removed so that potential business users of Squeak have a "clean" image to work from font-wise. On the other hand, apparently there is some legal precedent recently that bitmap fonts are not copyrightable, so this may or may not really be an issue. Anyway, "Accujen" is a reasonable looking sans-serif replacement for the Comic fonts.
This changeset does not remove the ComicSansMS TrueType font (yet), which probably should be removed, because outline fonts definitely are copyrightable, and this is not a free font either as far as I know. However, I was going to wait and possibly remove this one as part of incorporating the BitStream Vera TrueType fonts, so we have a bunch of replacement TT fonts before getting rid of this one.
The "Atlanta" bitmap font, which someone donated to Squeak awhile back, remains.
The Accufonts come with their own (very simple) license, included in the changeset preamble. This seems fine, fonts are a very different entity from source code, and it is not uncommon for software to provide a separate license for included fonts.
There are still a couple of smallish issues with these fonts, but I wanted to get these in soon so that people can try them out, and we can fix/tweak things based on feedback from that. The problems I know of are: The character widths for some punctuation characters could use some adjusting... e.g. the Accuny period character is quite wide and looks funny IMHO. Also, some fonts such as Accuny09 and Accuny10 have the same size of 12, which can cause problems for some tools, such as Boris Gaertner's useful FontEditor tool.
One odd last thing... I notice that the "Smalltalk garbageCollect" at the end of the postscript does not remove the old fonts from "StrikeFont allInstances", but doing a manual garbageCollect after filing in the changeset does. Maybe the ChangeSet object is somehow holding onto the fonts up 'til then, or something. No biggie I guess, we'll make sure garbage is collected sometime before 3.7 goes final. ;-)
- Doug
To continue a discussion that wasn't properly concluded...
On Thursday 19 February 2004 4:42 pm, Doug Way wrote:
Now, there were also the Comic bitmap fonts which were removed, which did not really have a close equivalent in the Accufonts... you may be referring more to these. (The replacement used for these was Accujen, which is at least sans-serif.) The Comic fonts were actually not Apple fonts, but fonts "borrowed" from MS. So, there was no Squeak-L related reason to remove these, but they were also removed simply because they weren't legitimate free fonts. However, there is some question as to whether bitmap fonts are copyrightable at all, apparently there are recent rulings indicating that they are not, so you could make the argument that the Comic bitmap fonts should have been left alone. I decided to go along with the original StableSqueak decision to remove them, though... seemed like the safer course of action. Do people think that we should re-add these fonts?
Not necessarily.
* The 'Comic' name is probably trademarked (though bitmap fonts themselves aren't copyrightable in the US, their names are usually trademarked). * The StrikeFonts are in MacRoman encoding; this doesn't work well for the m17n work (where Latin-1 is preferred). * The StrikeFonts do not have international glyphs (especially Japanese).
I think we should remove ComicSansMS (see below) and find (or construct) a replacement, licensed or freely distributable, TrueType font that is suitable for Etoys and that includes a wider set of glyphs.
Some issues:
On Tuesday 27 January 2004 11:06 pm, jp1660@att.net wrote:
And Microsoft's withdrawn the free distribution of Comic Sans besides.
They have quit distributing it but they haven't changed the license terms for those of us who got it earlier.
The EULA (End-user license agreement) states: ------- 1. GRANT OF LICENSE. This EULA grants you the following rights:
* Installation and Use. You may install and use an unlimited number of copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT. * Reproduction and Distribution. You may reproduce and distribute an unlimited number of copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT; provided that each copy shall be a true and complete copy, including all copyright and trademark notices, and shall be accompanied by a copy of this EULA. Copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT may not be distributed for profit either on a standalone basis or included as part of your own product. -------
And from their FAQ (now posted at http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/faq8.htm):
------- Q What can I do with these fonts?
A For all the rules that govern the use of these fonts please read the end user license agreement.
* Anyone can download and install these fonts for their own use. * Designers can specify the fonts within their Web pages. Our guide to specifying fonts in Web pages explains how to do this. * You may only redistribute the fonts in their original form (.exe or .sit.hqx) and with their original file name from your Web site or intranet site. * You must not supply the fonts, or any derivative fonts based on them, in any form that adds value to commercial products, such as CD-ROM or disk based multimedia programs, application software or utilities. See Microsoft's permissions site for more details. -------
Sounds like we're not following their rules here.
On Tuesday 27 January 2004 1:47 pm, Doug Way wrote:
This changeset does not remove the ComicSansMS TrueType font (yet), which probably should be removed, because outline fonts definitely are copyrightable, and this is not a free font either as far as I know. However, I was going to wait and possibly remove this one as part of incorporating the BitStream Vera TrueType fonts, so we have a bunch of replacement TT fonts before getting rid of this one.
On Saturday 21 February 2004 6:43 pm, Andreas Raab wrote:
The document is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/os2.htm#fst
Comic (as well as Verdana, Tahoma and a whole bunch of others) were shipped as the MS web font pack with "installable embedding" rights. No restriction whatsoever to have them inside Squeak.
On Monday 23 February 2004 10:34 am, Doug Way wrote:
Okay then, if there are truly no restrictions on the ComicSansMS truetype font, then I won't take it out when adding the Bitstream Vera fonts.
As it stands in 3.7b we have embedded the ComicSansMS (as a TTCFont) but *not* the ComicSansBoldMS. But there are a number of places where the ComicBold font was used (especially in Etoys); we really should consider coming up with a suitable alternative.
Yoshiki, what do you need for Japanese Etoys?
Hello,
I must have missed the discussion in January(?).
- The StrikeFonts are in MacRoman encoding; this doesn't work well for the
m17n work (where Latin-1 is preferred).
If we get glyphs for characters that are in latin-1 but not in MacRoman, This should be ok.
- The StrikeFonts do not have international glyphs (especially Japanese).
Ah, not all fonts have to cover all the range. It is perfectly fine that a font only covers 256 or whatever number of characters.
I think we should remove ComicSansMS (see below) and find (or construct) a replacement, licensed or freely distributable, TrueType font that is suitable for Etoys and that includes a wider set of glyphs.
Probably the conclusion here is the same, but don't worry about wider set of glyphs too much.
For Japanese, some people tried Mika-chan font for alternative *fun* look (http://mikachan-font.com/index2.html). Now, I might consider this as the default eToys look...
-- Yoshiki
Ned said:
Not necessarily.
- The 'Comic' name is probably trademarked (though bitmap fonts themselves
aren't copyrightable in the US, their names are usually trademarked).
- The StrikeFonts are in MacRoman encoding; this doesn't work well for the
m17n work (where Latin-1 is preferred).
- The StrikeFonts do not have international glyphs (especially Japanese).
I think we should remove ComicSansMS (see below) and find (or construct) a replacement, licensed or freely distributable, TrueType font that is suitable for Etoys and that includes a wider set of glyphs.
I noticed on the bancomicsans.com site one page that has a number of free comic sans replacement fonts, maybe one or more of those would do...
On Tuesday, April 13, 2004, at 02:44 PM, Ned Konz wrote:
To continue a discussion that wasn't properly concluded...
Thanks for keeping this discussion on track...
On Thursday 19 February 2004 4:42 pm, Doug Way wrote:
Now, there were also the Comic bitmap fonts which were removed, which did not really have a close equivalent in the Accufonts... you may be referring more to these. (The replacement used for these was Accujen, which is at least sans-serif.) The Comic fonts were actually not Apple fonts, but fonts "borrowed" from MS. So, there was no Squeak-L related reason to remove these, but they were also removed simply because they weren't legitimate free fonts. However, there is some question as to whether bitmap fonts are copyrightable at all, apparently there are recent rulings indicating that they are not, so you could make the argument that the Comic bitmap fonts should have been left alone. I decided to go along with the original StableSqueak decision to remove them, though... seemed like the safer course of action. Do people think that we should re-add these fonts?
Not necessarily.
- The 'Comic' name is probably trademarked (though bitmap fonts
themselves aren't copyrightable in the US, their names are usually trademarked).
Probably true about the trademark. I wonder if that means it's okay to give them a different name, if the bitmap fonts themselves are not copyrightable?
- The StrikeFonts are in MacRoman encoding; this doesn't work well for
the m17n work (where Latin-1 is preferred).
- The StrikeFonts do not have international glyphs (especially
Japanese).
True, although we have the same problem with all of our other StrikeFonts anyway. This will be a general problem for the m17n work.
I think we should remove ComicSansMS (see below) and find (or construct) a replacement, licensed or freely distributable, TrueType font that is suitable for Etoys and that includes a wider set of glyphs.
To summarize, we had two (bitmap) comic StrikeFonts, called ComicPlain and ComicBold... these were removed. Then we also had the antialiased TrueType font called ComicSansMS, which is still in the image.
EToys formerly used the ComicPlain/ComicBold StrikeFonts, until they were removed. We could either add some comic-ish StrikeFonts back in for EToys, or have them use a comic-ish TrueType font. I'd guess either would be fine... a TTFont might be okay as long as the font sizes used aren't too small. (starts to get a bit fuzzy)
(And then there are your FreeType/2 changes, which displays TTFonts more crisply with hinting, but that's another ball of wax which is not ready for 3.7 in any case.)
Some issues:
... And from their FAQ (now posted at http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/faq8.htm):
Q What can I do with these fonts?
A For all the rules that govern the use of these fonts please read the end user license agreement.
* Anyone can download and install these fonts for their own use. * Designers can specify the fonts within their Web pages. Ourguide to specifying fonts in Web pages explains how to do this. * You may only redistribute the fonts in their original form (.exe or .sit.hqx) and with their original file name from your Web site or intranet site. * You must not supply the fonts, or any derivative fonts based on them, in any form that adds value to commercial products, such as CD-ROM or disk based multimedia programs, application software or utilities. See Microsoft's permissions site for more details.
Sounds like we're not following their rules here.
Yeah, it looks like we're definitely violating the third bullet point... we should probably remove ComicSansMS.
Perhaps we should look at one of the free comicsans replacements that John Pfersich just mentioned. Or maybe just bring back the bitmap comic fonts with a different name (if that's legit).
- Doug
Hello,
- The StrikeFonts are in MacRoman encoding; this doesn't work well for
the m17n work (where Latin-1 is preferred).
- The StrikeFonts do not have international glyphs (especially
Japanese).
True, although we have the same problem with all of our other StrikeFonts anyway. This will be a general problem for the m17n work.
See my other comment. What we need is a (generalized) mechanism to fall back to default font, which I hope to finish as soon as possible.
-- Yoshiki
On Wednesday 14 April 2004 10:26 pm, Doug Way wrote:
Probably true about the trademark. I wonder if that means it's okay to give them a different name, if the bitmap fonts themselves are not copyrightable?
In most countries other than the US, fonts *are* copyrightable.
To summarize, we had two (bitmap) comic StrikeFonts, called ComicPlain and ComicBold... these were removed. Then we also had the antialiased TrueType font called ComicSansMS, which is still in the image.
EToys formerly used the ComicPlain/ComicBold StrikeFonts, until they were removed. We could either add some comic-ish StrikeFonts back in for EToys, or have them use a comic-ish TrueType font. I'd guess either would be fine... a TTFont might be okay as long as the font sizes used aren't too small. (starts to get a bit fuzzy)
Sounds like we're not following their rules here.
Yeah, it looks like we're definitely violatin>
- Dougg the third bullet
point... we should probably remove ComicSansMS.
Andreas' comment about the "installable embedding" flag could be relevant here, though (if we view them as being embedded rather than distributed separately, which they're not).
Perhaps we should look at one of the free comicsans replacements that John Pfersich just mentioned. Or maybe just bring back the bitmap comic fonts with a different name (if that's legit).
I don't know. Any IP attorneys out there want to take a swing at this?
squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org
-
Doug Way -
John Pfersich -
Ned Konz -
Yoshiki Ohshima