8:05 p.m.
Hi folks!
I've been having a conversation with Mårten Nettelbladt over email
lately. He is the creator of the freeware font Miso:
http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Miso
We've been discussing the possibility of Mårten relicensing Miso under a
Fedora-compatible font license. Mårten is amenable to such a license,
but he very rightly has a concern about some issues with the font he'd
like to correct before spreading the font far and wide with such a
license. He doesn't have the time, however, to work much on the font
anymore so he needs some help in getting them fixed. I think he would be
doing us a great favor to open up the font license, so if we can chip in
and help him out we can help each other.
I was wondering if anyone on the list would be willing to help address
these issues, or even just provide instruction that I or someone else on
the Fedora design team could use (since we are not experts on these
points of fonts) to address them ourselves?
Here are the issues Mårten raised that he'd like help addressing - does
anyone have ideas on how to do any of these? (Some of these are
suggestions he's gotten from users - are they the right way to do it?
E.g., the otf file naming suggestion?)
- The OTF file to all lower case and use the same base name
for the regular as in the TTF files. This would result in miso-reg.otf,
miso-bol.otf and mis-lig.otf.
- For fontconfig (which is used on Linux) it would be better the family
and style for the light font would be slightly altered. This would
result in "family=Miso Light" and "style=Regular", in stead of
"family=Miso" and "style=Light" because most of the software only
recognizes Regular, Bold, Italic and Bold Italic and does not know how
to make a Light available. Unless, it would be available as "Miso Light
~ Regular".
- Provide URL Vendor in the OTF and TTF metadata for all fonts.
- Provide PANOSE metadata, see
http://panose.com/ProductsServices/pan1.aspx . Especially Family Kind
(2) Serif Style (15) would greatly improve selection of this font via
tools like fontmatrix.
- Offer an Italic and Bold Italic for Miso and an Italic for Miso Light.
Probably for such a type, these will be simply slanted. However, when
you do it (instead of a fake italic which is slanted with a default
value of the software using your type) you are able to control the angle
of the italic versions.
- Also, the TTF-files are the originals and they were converted to OTF
by someone. Some people have reported trouble with the spacing of "c"
"John" said: (http://www.omkrets.se/miso-spotted/#comment-117)
using true type resolve problem also in xpress - So, that would have to
be fixed as well, perhaps just a new conversion, or create OTF files
directly from the font software. I used TypeTool and it didn't have that
option.
This font is a very attractive-looking font, good for use in logos, and
I think this is a great opportunity to add a nice openly-licensed font
to Fedora. Even if you don't have the time to help us fix these, if you
know what we can do to fix them, sharing that expertise with us would be
a big help.
Thanks,
~m
4:52 a.m.
Le Mer 3 février 2010 03:05, Máirín Duffy a écrit :
Hi folks!
Hi Máirín,
Thank you for your font evangelizing efforts! They're really appreciated, and
not only Fedora-side.
I've been having a conversation with Mårten Nettelbladt over
email
lately. He is the creator of the freeware font Miso:
http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Miso
We've been discussing the possibility of Mårten relicensing Miso under a
Fedora-compatible font license. Mårten is amenable to such a license,
but he very rightly has a concern about some issues with the font he'd
like to correct before spreading the font far and wide with such a
license.
We accept many font licenses but we really prefer OFL and GPL + font
exception. That makes it easier to share material between fonts.
Here are the issues Mårten raised that he'd like help addressing
- does
anyone have ideas on how to do any of these? (Some of these are
suggestions he's gotten from users - are they the right way to do it?
E.g., the otf file naming suggestion?)
- The OTF file to all lower case and use the same base name
for the regular as in the TTF files. This would result in miso-reg.otf,
miso-bol.otf and mis-lig.otf.
Linux and fontconfig does not care about file naming at all. It's better to
have a clear base latin file name without spaces that tells people what's in
the font, but for us it is a purely cosmetic issue.
- For fontconfig (which is used on Linux) it would be better the
family
and style for the light font would be slightly altered. This would
result in "family=Miso Light" and "style=Regular", in stead of
"family=Miso" and "style=Light" because most of the software only
recognizes Regular, Bold, Italic and Bold Italic and does not know how
to make a Light available. Unless, it would be available as "Miso Light
~ Regular".
This is very bad advice. We'll complain during package review if this change
is made. We want fonts to respect strictly the naming standardised by
Microsoft in its WWS whitepaper (for the same reasons Microsoft did it, have
font names that apps can use to apply advanced style decisions). It is true
all apps do not support the new naming style completely. They will be fixed
faster than the font can be changed in the future (they need to be fixed
anyway because of the new proprietary fonts that only use the new standard).
In the meanwhile fonts can and should declare two sets of names, with the
new-style one first. Old apps will only see the second one. This is what
DejaVu does and what our default font does is good enough for other fonts. You
can open DejaVu in fontforge or any other font editor and copy its naming
logic.
See also :
A. the naming parts of
http://nim.fedorapeople.org/Understanding%20fonts%20and%20fontconfig.tar.gz
(I need to finish this someday).
B. fix-font-naming in fontpackages-tools
C. http://blogs.msdn.com/text/attachment/2249036.ashx
http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/typotechnica2007/Font%20names.pdf
http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/atypi2006/CSS%20&%20OT%2015.pdf
- Provide URL Vendor in the OTF and TTF metadata for all fonts.
Moderately useful, especially if the URL is not stable long-term
- Provide PANOSE metadata, see
http://panose.com/ProductsServices/pan1.aspx . Especially Family Kind
(2) Serif Style (15) would greatly improve selection of this font via
tools like fontmatrix.
Completely optional. Too many fonts have bad panose info for apps to use it
anymore.
URL and Panose are almost completely useless in practice. Focus on the fields
which are shown in the GNOME font viewer (description and licensing). Please
also make sure :
A. the font version is properly incremented each time the font is changed, and
all the font files in the font family use the same versions
B. licensing is properly documented in the font metadata and as a plain text
file distributed with the font in the same zip or tarball (the exact license
text not a fuzzy reference that can mean anything legally)
- Offer an Italic and Bold Italic for Miso and an Italic for Miso
Light.
Probably for such a type, these will be simply slanted. However, when
you do it (instead of a fake italic which is slanted with a default
value of the software using your type) you are able to control the angle
of the italic versions.
This is a great long-term goal but should not block initial publication. We'll
pick up additions later when they are published. Font authors tend to be
perfectionists (which is good) but if they follow their instincts they never
deem anything ready for publication.
- Also, the TTF-files are the originals and they were converted to
OTF
by someone. Some people have reported trouble with the spacing of "c"
"John" said: (http://www.omkrets.se/miso-spotted/#comment-117)
using true type resolve problem also in xpress - So, that would have to
be fixed as well, perhaps just a new conversion, or create OTF files
directly from the font software. I used TypeTool and it didn't have that
option.
Nowadays TTF and OTF are 100% similar feature-wise (even Adobe people say it).
However they have slight technical differences, so converting between TTF and
OTF can have side effects and is not recommended in general. Stick with the
format the font used at first and do not try to change it.
Please also ask upstream to:
A. complete almost-complete language coverages (fontconfig will ignore a font
if it is missing just one glyph in a language). You can identify those with
FC=DEBUG=256 fc-query <font-file.ttf> | filter-langcover
ttfcoverage <font-file.ttf> | filter-unicover
(from fontpackages-tools, the second one is not as useful as the first one)
B. as many font format errors as reported by fontlint are fixed as possible
(fontlint can be excessive so the font author need not follow fontlint
blindly. But looking at fontlint messages is a good idea).
Best regards,
--
Nicolas Mailhot
5:15 a.m.
Le Mer 3 février 2010 11:52, Nicolas Mailhot a écrit :
A. complete almost-complete language coverages (fontconfig will
ignore a font
if it is missing just one glyph in a language). You can identify those with
FC=DEBUG=256 fc-query <font-file.ttf> | filter-langcover
FC_DEBUG=256 fc-query <font-file.ttf> | filter-langcover
Sorry about the typo
--
Nicolas Mailhot
8:05 a.m.
Máirín wrote:
- Offer an Italic and Bold Italic for Miso and an Italic for Miso
Light.
Probably for such a type, these will be simply slanted.
Yes, generally referred to as an oblique version.
- Also, the TTF-files are the originals and they were converted to
OTF
by someone. Some people have reported trouble with the spacing of "c"
"John" said: (http://www.omkrets.se/miso-spotted/#comment-117)
using true type resolve problem also in xpress - So, that would have to
be fixed as well, perhaps just a new conversion, or create OTF files
directly from the font software. I used TypeTool and it didn't have that
option.
The conversion doesn't appear to have been done very well at all, and I'd
discard it in favour of the original TTF.
As the comments suggest (and FontForge shows), the "c" has conflicting
widths in two of the font's tables.
If you look at some sample text in Fontmatrix, it is clear that the left
sidebearings of "A", "J", "S" and "Y" have been
changed (flip between the
TTF and OTF and you'll see some wobbling!)
It doesn't even express Mårten's wish for the font to be free, as the
conversion changes it from being an installable font without restrictions,
to being "printable document, no subsetting".
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3 comments
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participants (3)
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Máirín Duffy -
Nicolas Mailhot -
Paul Flo Williams