Re: Public Domain Fonts for the Web

Clive Bruton wrote:

> Charles Peyton Taylor wrote at 23/02/98 8:09 am
>
> >(A copy of this message has also been posted to the following newsgroups:
> >comp.fonts)
> >
> >This is something Ive been thinking about a lot lately.
>
> I think if you want free fonts, you'd better start making them. That is
> of course if you think the vast range of shareware and freeware fonts (as
> well as those that come with your OS) aren't enough.
>
> >...my copy of Fontographer...
>
> See you have the tools already.
>
> >(can it get me sued?)
>
> Of course
>
> >2) COPYRIGHT/LEFT :   Could the GNU public license be applied
> >to a set of public domain fonts? Should these fonts be free,
> >public domain, or CopyLeft?
>
> Something can be free and still have copyright protection, PD tends to
> imply that it is copyright free.
>
> >3) QUALITY: A lot of the public domain fonts that Ive seen so
> >far might not be good for a archive of this sort.
> > A lot are display type and wouldnt be very useful for body
> >text.
> > A lot dont have a complete western character set.
> > A lot have only one style when it would be best to have
> >normal, italic, bold, bold italic, and (maybe) outline
> >versions.
> > And who determines what  a good font looks like? I know what
> >I like, and I have good taste, but I have no formal graphic
> >design training.
>
> The problem is that it takes *a lot* of work to produce good fonts,
> that's why there aren't many high quality freeware text fonts.
>
> >Hmmm.... actually, I dont know
> >who designed Helvetica,
>
> Quite.
>
> -- Clive



I  have ranted  once on this issue but the important thing is not so much
free fonts
as a good set of standard fonts that are universally available.
The natural conclusion is that they mush be free.  If there is another way to
answer this that
is acceptable to the font industry it would be nice.

Plus from what I can tell there is no motivation in  the font industry to
allow such standardization.

And one last comment on "free" software and the font industry crying about
hard  it is to make good fonts.

Guess how many man hours have gone into linux and other free projects  for
the benefit
of the computer industry. Free software cost's its creators a lot of time and
effort and money.
I hope that everyone in the font industry that cries about the hard work put
into font design uses no free
software.  This would include X windows.

The  reluctance  of the font industry to contribute  because of the work
involved in font creation  is nonsense. With this attitude there would be no
gcc linux emacs X11 or  Unix as we know it today.

Having said this the font industries vigorous attempts to keep font
technology  closed smacks of simple attempts to maintain the current status
quo.

Mike

mike@jmaca.com

Received on Tuesday, 24 February 1998 13:20:50 UTC