Re: Is the GUST-FONT-NOSOURCE-LICENSE free?
On Tue, 14 Mar 2006, Frank Küster wrote:
Except for the source issue. The concrete example, as you might have
guessed, are the ANTP fonts, which are available as PostScript Type1,
TrueType and OpenType fonts.
I have heard a talk of the author, Janusz Nowacki, last week at the
DANTE meeting, and I got the impression that in fact he uses FontForge
or a similar editor, and doesn't use its scripting facilities (much).
I'll ask him again, but it seems to me that in this case the PostScript
Outlines are in fact the preferred form of modification for the author,
and I see no reason not to accept this as source in the sense of the
DFSG, since there doesn't seem to be anything better. Consequently, the
fonts would be free.
This font has been originally created using METAPOST; its creation has
been described in a paper titled "Antykwa Poltawskiego: a parametrized
outline font". However, since it has been heavily tinkered with while in
Type1 form, there is no other "source" of the finished font.
Per analogy, if you render a 3D scene and then finish it with Gimp, the
original scene is no longer the source; the preferred form of modification
is now the 2D image as otherwise all finishing steps would have to be
reapplied.
Anyway, I've packaged one of the GUST fonts (antp) once. A ftpmaster
(Joerg Jaspert) didn't have problems with the source; the reason for
rejection was unspecified license:
* CTAN says "public domain"
* GUST's page mentions a "GNU license"
* the embedded license field says just "(C) by Polish TeX Users Group
GUST"
I've tried contacting Janusz Nowacki on 28 Apr 2005 and 14 Sep 2005 but
received no answer. He's obviously alive, so this could be caused either
by his lack of time or a mail misconfiguration somewhere on the way;
anyway, I finally forgot about the issue. As there's a relicensing going
on, it's moot now anyway.
ANTP, at least in the version I got, has the hinting of several glyphs
seriously botched; it can be easily fixed with FontForge by adjusting the
glyphs or just dropping the hints. As this font has no straight diagonal
lines, FreeType's autohinter does a good job, too.
On the other hand, another font, ANTF, consists mostly of diagonal lines,
and thus looks awful in typical on-screen sizes; its wide charset coverage
makes it useful nevertheless.
My old ITP for ttf-antp (#299771) is still lingering open, but as you seem
to be interested in the whole GUST set, there is no point in having a
separate badly-done package for just one family. Just take the Panose
data (for R):
2 4 5 3 6 5 11 2 3 3
or in textual form:
Family Text & Display
Serifs Square Cove
Weight Book
Proportion Modern
Contrast Medium
Stroke Variation Gradual/Horizontal
Arm Style Non-Straight Arms/Double Serif
Letterform Normal/Contact
Midline Standard/Pointed
X-Height Constant/Standard
The Panose rules are pretty counterintuitive and operate on measurements
rather than on textual description -- for example, the cap on 'A' is
flattened, but small enough to fit into "pointed"; it takes several hours
to slog through the rules for the first time, but, once the data is set,
Panose can point out similar fonts pretty well. As it's a part of CSS3,
it's a good idea to have this data included.
Regards.
--
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Segmentation fault (core dumped)
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