wnpp: ITP: msttcorefonts -- installer package for MS TrueType core fonts for Web
Package: wnpp
Version: N/A
Severity: normal
I intend to package an installer for Microsoft's "TrueType Core Fonsts for
the Web" font pack. These TrueType fonts are available at no cost from
Microsofts web site and are provided "in the interests of cross-platform
compatibility". For more info see:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fontpack
The license for these fonts is non-free, but the installer itself is GPL,
so it will go in contrib.
The package is based loosely on the xanim-modules installer, which
automatically fetches files from the web, processes the files, and installs
them in the proper place. One complication is that these "cross-platform"
compatibility fonts are only available as i386 Windows self-installing
(worse than just self-extracting) .exe files or as Macintosh .sit.hqx files.
This installer will ignore the .exe files, and process the .sit.hqx files
instead. Unfortunately, one of the fonts is not available for Mac, and
two of the fonts are compressed in version 5.5 of Aladdin Stuffit Expander,
which can't yet be decompressed by macunpack. This means that the installer
will only install 8 out of 11 fonts, but that's better than nothing.
The installer includes some black magic to reconstruct PC compatible fonts
from the Macintosh files.
Eric Sharkey
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