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Re: x3270 licenses



On Mon, Feb 07, 2000 at 04:14:52PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote:
> Well, I can't argue with that. But I'm happy for not being the
> judge who - in these days of digital typesetting - must decide
> when something is an alternative representation of a font and
> when it is just a document which happens to contain every letter
> in the alphabet and enough text to exhibit a selection of common
> kerning pairs...

There is jurisprudential precedent on this issue, at least in the United
States.[*]

It has been ruled that typefaces are not copyrightable, but fonts are.

Note the difference.  The typeface is what your eyes see.  A font is a set
of instructions, similar to a computer program, for generating a typeface
given a set of input parameters.

Things like hinted fonts are very complex indeed, as most of us know; the
same font can produce quite distinct typefaces at 6 points and 36, for
instance.

Simple bitmapped fonts are not effectively copyrightable, IIRC.  (All
someone has to do is arrange for every glyph to be displayed, and then
"reverse-engineer" it.)

Video card manufacturers, for instance, cannot meaningfully assert
copyright on VGA BIOS fonts because these are just bitmapped typefaces, not
proper fonts.

There is a world of difference between bitmapped fonts and hinted fonts
like Type 1.  Adobe has built an empire on this distinction.

[*] This is to the best of my knowledge, which is a few years old, but
which I regarded as being from a reputable source.  Sorry, I don't have a
cite.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson            |
Debian GNU/Linux               |    Never attribute to malice that which can
branden@ecn.purdue.edu         |    be adequately explained by stupidity.
roger.ecn.purdue.edu/~branden/ |

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