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Re: standard fonts and euro



On 15.V.2001 at 19:33 Miros/law Baran wrote:
> 
> Are you sure that such modifications (adding one glyph to the bitmap
> font) are disallowed?

I suppose them to be disallowed.  The purpose of trademarks is to
guarantee than the product is produced by the trademark holder. For
example B&H may want to add its own version of that glyph to their
lucida fonts. They want to make clean that the modified fonts are not
produced by them.  I choosed B&H as an example because they explicitly
disallowed using their font trademarks (lucida) in fonts of other
vendors.  They stated that in a mail to one font developer.  I think we
must not use without permition the other trademarks (besides lucida*)
too. We can not be sure that their copyright holders will not seek their
rights in future.

> > trademarks in free programs.  The strings like `-adobe-helvetica-*'
> > must not be hardcoded in free programs.
> 
> This string is not trademarked.

Yes, it is not a trademark.  But it forces us to use the original
unchanged fonts of Adobe.  If we want to use some improved fonts, then
we may not use naither adobe, nor helvetica in them (i.e. in fonts).
There is no legal problem to use these strings in programs.  But it is
disallowed to claim that some program is produced by Adobe (if it
isn't).  I suppose that it is OK to name some software `Helvetica' if it
is not font, but for fonts that is forbiden.

> I like the BizNet's approach better: if you must change the name,
> change the name, but use appropriate alias files. This does not break
> any configuration.

Yes, but that seams to me like a temporaty hack.  I have read that
developers in the fonts XFree mailinglist don't want to use aliases.
(And I don't like them too...)

> > I didn't mean that we must stop to use the trademarks like `Linux'.
> > But free programs *must not depend* on that trademark.  If I am not
> > allowed to distribute an unofficicial kernel and name it `Linux' that
> > is OK. But if free programs stop to work because my kernel is not
> > named `Linux' that is not OK.
> 
> I think it's a bit too paranoid approach, maybe it is this evening that
> I just cannot grok, what you exactly mean. May I forward this
> discussion to Adam Twardoch, who is more competent in font issues?

Certainly.

Anton Zinoviev, zinoviev@debian.org




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