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Re: Bug#156503: microsoft changed its policy, msttcorefonts broken



On Wed, Aug 14, 2002 at 06:48:06PM -0500, Scott Dier wrote:
> On Mon, 2002-08-12 at 20:01, Martin Sarsale wrote:
> 
> > Since micro$oft stopped giving their true type fonts for free (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fontpack/default.htm), msttcorefonts is unusable :(
> 
> It would be interesting to investigate either if a font author could be
> convinced to create some basic fonts for the free software movement or

Do we really need a font author? How about just starting a project and
learning how to make our own tt fonts?

> how much money it is to get a few (4-5?) basic scalable TT fonts and
> start a donation fund.  I think the former is more likely, but the
> latter is worth looking into if the cost per font isn't absurd. (over
> $5k/font? I have no idea what the 'going rate' for unlimited
> distribution licenses are.)  Of course, the latter really only gets us
> 'free' fonts as in beer, and most likely not in 'source' or
> 'modification' rights.  

Which is why it would be better for someone to donate their time and
make some free as in speech fonts. 

> Are there any 'opensource' font authors out
> there doing anthing interesting?
>  

IANAFA, but I would be very interested in working with anyone else who
would like to create a library of some free as in speech truetype
fonts. I don't know all that much about fonts, I wrote a simple font
parser for linux and macosX when I worked at Deneba Software, but that's about
the extent of my knowledge. There seems to be a genuine need here and
I imagine that if someone started a project and it got some momentum,
some font author somewhere might help out. 

From a simple google search:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=open+source+font+creation+software

I found this page:

http://jeff.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/editors.html

which lists these two items of note:

http://metatype.sourceforge.net/ - Free TrueType Fonts - this page has
truetype fonts that are downloadable, but the project seems like it's
not being maintained. the last, and only release was on
2001-12-21. Also, there is no license provided for the fonts. 

and

http://pfaedit.sourceforge.net/ - A postscript font editor that lets
you create your own postscript, truetype, opentype, cid-keyed and
bitmap (bdf) fonts, or edit existing ones. 
which is already in the archive, but might allow someone to start
creating some fonts. 

Maybe we need to develop some free tools that allow easier truetype
font creation. 

-- 
michael cardenas | lead software engineer | lindows.com | hyperpoem.net

"Being is what it is."
- Jean-Paul Sartre

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