[ros-kernel] Re: Fonts

[Waldo Alvarez Cañizares]

Hello James:
 
From: ros-kernel-bounces at reactos.com on behalf of James Briggs
Sent: Wed 2/11/2004 9:21 PM
To: ros-kernel at reactos.com
Cc: ros-kernel-bounces at reactos.com
Subject: [ros-kernel] Re: Fonts



>Message: 1
>Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 16:43:22 -0500
>From: Waldo Alvarez Ca?izares <wac at lab.matcom.uh.cu>
>Subject: RE: [ros-kernel] Hey guys...
>To: "ReactOS Kernel List" <ros-kernel at reactos.com>
>
>Hello Wesley:
>
>Remember that MS gifted you but not me. I don't think that creating
>similar fonts is a hard to do task. Or maybe some one doanates them or
>even maybe the foundation could buy some good quality fonts in the
>future for the project.
>
>Regards
>Waldo.

I think you're seriously underestimating the work involved
in font design and production. The licensing cost for an os
is usually millions of US dollars.

I'm not underestimating it, the easier of the jobs should be respected. But when you compare fonts with other components of the OS is really little. I'm sure that you can find more people with skills to design and create truetype fonts than people that works in kernel mode dealing directly with exception handlers or interrupt handlers over a serial line. Simply because it requires alot more knowledge althought design requires talent too. About the cost, Bill Gates once mentioned that every windows release costed more than a tryp to the moon. And look, you can see a lot of free OS all over the planet. Probably they costed more.

Here's some useful info though:

Gnome and Bitstream http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS5334740037.html

So why not keep using Bitstream's fonts with the release?


Amateur effort http://www.theory.org/~strthrwr/fonts/free/index.php <http://www.theory.org/~strthrwr/fonts/free/index.php> 

I'm sure that Matt Chisholm will be happy to get his fonts an it's name distributed with ReactOS. That will mean more donators to him.


Effort for free UCS font http://www.nongnu.org/freefont/ <http://www.nongnu.org/freefont/> 

Quoting them:

"Building a dependence on non-free software, even a niche one like fonts, is dangerous. Microsoft Truetype core fonts were never free, they were just costless. Citing the TrueType core fonts for the Web FAQ <http://www.microsoft.com/typography/faq/faq8.htm> : You may only redistribute the fonts in their original form (.exe or .sit.hqx) and with their original file name from your Web site or intranet site. You must not supply the fonts, or any derivative fonts based on them, in any form that adds value to commercial products, such as CD-ROM or disk based multimedia programs, application software or utilities. As of August 2002, however, the fonts are not anymore available on the Web, which makes the situation clearer."

The explanation why we should NOT release MS fonts with ReactOS.

"Don't there exist any free high-quality outline fonts? Yes, they do. URW++, a German digital typefoundry, released their own version of the 35 Postscript Type 1 core fonts under GPL as their donation to the Ghostscript project <http://www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/378/1996/5/0/2064811/> . The Wadalab Kanji comittee has produced Type 1 font files with thousands of filigree Japanese glyphs <ftp://ftp.ipl.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/pub/Font/> . Yannis Haralambous has drawn beautiful glyphs for the Omega typesetting system <http://omega.cse.unsw.edu.au:8080/> . And so on."

The problem is already solved! URW++ is on it.
I'm sure there are plenty more resources around, isjust a matter of searching them. So why the risk when we can avoid it.

Best Regards
Waldo Alvarez.

James.

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