Re: Licence Question for ttf fonts
On Sat, Dec 15, 2001 at 11:28:53PM +0100, Erich Schubert wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> copyright:
> -------------------------------
> Larabie Fonts End-user license agreement software product from Larabie Fonts
> ---------------------------------------------------
>
> [...]
>
If you keep the fonts as they are, the license allows for redistribution, so
it's good enough for non-free. You can't put the fonts in main because the
license puts some restrictions on what modified copies can be distributed.
If you want to put these fonts in main, you'll need to exclude the parts
which are restricted by copyright.
In the United States and many other places, copyright registrations are
allowed for typefaces only under very limited circumstances. Some outline
fonts are subject to limited copyright restrictions because of hinting
programs or other software embedded in the font. The output of those
programs, once converted to a bitmap in order to typeset a document, is not
a derived for work the purpose of copyright. By extension, an outline or
bitmap font generated by examining a typeset document is also not a derived
work.
Since most proportional fonts are quite unpleasant when rasterized without
their kerning and hinting programs, you'll need to rewrite those programs.
By examining a large document typeset in a given font, you should be able to
generate a fairly decent program. It's very likely that the process can be
automated to some degree, but I don't know if any software for that purpose
exists yet or how involved or tedious the process would be.
If you decide to procede further in this area, I suggest you look into
Donald Knuth's books on typeface and typesetting theory.
--
Brian Ristuccia
brian@ristuccia.com
bristucc@cs.uml.edu
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