Re: Hinting msttcorefonts--any defoma experts?
%% Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@debian.org> writes:
hdmh> Why bother, since nobody can distribute those fonts anymore?
This is wrong; they absolutely, without question _CAN_ be distributed,
under the same terms as they could be last month. The EULA is quite
clear. Have you read it?
There is nothing there that says you must download the fonts from
Microsoft; it quite clearly states that anyone can make them available
for download in the same way Microsoft did.
And, in fact, at least one person has: there is a SourceForge site where
you can download the fonts exactly as Microsoft used to distribute them.
http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/
%% "nate" <debian-user@aphroland.org> writes:
n> I wouldn't spend any time on it, the fonts are yanked from the
n> MS website and I read that the package is due to be yanked from
n> debian as a result
If you read that, you know more than me and I've been closely following
the discussion on the debian lists and in the BTS--or trying to. Is
there a discussion I'm not aware of? I know there was discussion of
whether or not the fonts could be included in Debian, and the consensus
was that it couldn't be in anything except non-free due to the EULA
restrictions. Others felt it couldn't even appear in non-free because
if it were packaged into a .deb file that would violate the EULA.
However, the msttcorefonts Debian package _never_ included these fonts.
Like a number of packages that "wrap" non-free software, it used wget to
download and install the fonts from the web directly onto the user's
system, exactly as MS distributed them.
The package could easily be modified to simply download these same files
from another site, like the SourceForge site perhaps, and that would be
100% legal and within the bounds of the EULA.
At the least, it could do as the realplayer package does, and require
you to download the fonts yourself then ask you where they are and
install them for you.
Now. As to whether that _will_ happen or not with the msttcorefonts
package, I can't say. This package is important to me and many others I
know, but it has kind of languished without any serious work for quite a
while now. I'm not complaining--it's not _that_ hard to install them by
hand rather than through the package--I'm just saying I wouldn't be very
surprised if the package sort of died out rather than being fixed up.
I'd be sad about that, but we'll see.
But if it died, it wouldn't be because the EULA for these fonts made the
package illegal.
Anyway, thanks all, but this wasn't the question I asked. Does anyone
have any docs/experience/helpful tips on hinting these fonts for defoma?
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul D. Smith <pausmith@nortelnetworks.com> HASMAT--HA Software Mthds & Tools
"Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
These are my opinions---Nortel Networks takes no responsibility for them.
Reply to: