Re: DFSG and fonts [was: Bug#91856: Hello]
DS> Does it cover Latin-3?
Yes, they do.
DS> If it doesn't, then there's a number of characters that could be
DS> added in minutes with the right tools to provide for support of
DS> Esperanto, Maltese and other languages, but we can't, because of
DS> the license.
We share your concern, and we did discuss that with Chuck. Chuck
agrees with us, and the Lucidux license does explicitly allow adding
new composite glyphs from glyphs that already exist in the font, as
long as you do it in a manner that does not perturb the existing
hinting.
(In more technical terms: you are allowed to create new glyphs using
the charstring seac operator. Other ways of creating new glyphs are
not allowed, as they require careful use of hint substitution
instructions, something few developers are competent to do.)
In addition, I'd like to point out that addition of composites can be
done above the layer of the font file; please check ``info ogonkify''
on a machine with a2ps installed.
DS> Currently. That attitude was also true for many programmers at one
DS> time who now write free software. I hope a similar change happens
DS> with font designers.
I share your hope, but I cannot help noticing that the number of
available scalable fonts is currently the greatest weakness of the
Free Software and Open Source community (communities?).
DS> what if X 5.0 only supports OpenType and BDF fonts, and Y&Y isn't
DS> interested in converting them?
I realise that's not what your point was about, but I'll mention that
I am personnally committed to improving the Type 1 support in future
versions of XFree86.
Regards,
Juliusz
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